The summer season is right around the corner, and many of us are so excited for warm summer days lounging by the poolside or hosting cookouts for family and friends. It’s essential for us lawn care nuts to keep our grass strong and healthy as the stressful heat of summer approaches. Below are some recommended summer lawn care tips.
1. Keep Up with Summer Mowing (and Reduce the Time Spent on This Chore)
Summer mowing can seem like an exhausting task as temperatures start to get warmer. In some parts of the country, it starts to get outright hot as temperatures climb into the 90s.
It can be even more challenging if you let the lawn get too tall. As your grass continues to grow taller, the lawn mower becomes harder to push. Keep your lawn at its appropriate height to reduce the amount of effort and time spent in the hot sun.
Below are the ideal summer mowing heights for a few various grass types. Keep in mind that specific grass brands may require a different mowing height.
- Bermuda Grass Summer Mowing Height: 0.5–1.5 inches
- Centipede Grass Summer Mowing Height: 1.5–2.0 inches
- St. Augustine Summer Mowing Height: 2–4 inches
- Zoysia Grass Summer Mowing Height (fine-bladed): 0.5–1.5 inches
- Zoysia Grass Summer Mowing Height (coarse-bladed): 1–2 inches
A good rule of thumb is to never remove more than a third of the leaf blade at a time. If a larger amount is removed, the grass will stress and potentially turn brown for a short period of time.
If you are returning from a summer vacation, you may have to mow multiple times to get the grass back to its desired height. Be sure to wait about 3–5 days between each mowing. One benefit of taller grass blades is that they provide more shade for the root system to stay cool and retain moisture during the hot summer days.
2. Keep Your Heat-Stressed Lawn Strong with the Right Summer Fertilizer
With rising outdoor temperatures comes increased soil temperatures and changing soil conditions. Your grass needs different nutrients at this time compared to what it needed in the spring or fall.
The lawn will more than likely endure some form of stress from the summer heat. It’s important to feed the grass with the appropriate amount of nutrients to help out with this stressful period by using a summer lawn fertilizer.
Grass requires less nitrogen in the summer than it would in the spring when it’s coming out of dormancy and trying to green up. Nitrogen promotes new growth, which will not survive in the heat of the summer and the wrong fertilizer combined with excess sunlight during the summer can easily cause scorched spots in your yard.
Sod University recommends two different fertilizer options for the summer, however you will only need to use one of the two options for summer fertilization. Using both at the same time may result in burns in your lawn.
Option 1: Our first recommendation is the Lawnifi® Summer Fertilizer Box, a liquid fertilizer program designed to give lawns the nutrients they need to survive and flourish during the hot summer months.
Option 2: The next recommendation we have is Lawnifi Foundation, a granular fertilizer option that comes in a 25-pound bag and feeds for three months. With a 29-0-5 NPK formulation, Lawnifi Foundation is the perfect granular fertilizer for lawns and gardens.
