Achieving a fresh and vibrant look for your home every summer begins with the lush greenery of a well-maintained lawn. While the scorching temperatures may pose a challenge, expert lawn care service companies in Oakville assure us that maintaining a healthy lawn through the summer heat is entirely achievable with the right care.
In this guide, we’ll explore ten invaluable tips to ensure your lawn remains robust and vibrant throughout the summer season. Read on!
Understanding Summer’s Impact on Your Lawn
Several interesting things are happening to your lawn during the summer season, all of which contribute to how green or dried up it ends up looking:
- Grass Growth
During the summer months, the sunlight is strong and consistent. The grass on your lawn typically experiences rapid growth during times when the temperature is just right. However, when the heat increases, the grass blades may start to fade if they are not heat-tolerant.
- Moisture and Watering
The higher temperature during summer months causes rapid evaporation of moisture from the soil of your lawn. This leaves it drier than before, and you may need to water your lawn more frequently than before.
- Weeds
Summer heat creates an ideal habitat for weeds to grow and spread in your lawn. If you haven’t done weeding and feeding during the spring or prepared your lawn before the snow, you may experience rapid weed growth.
- Soil Nutrients
During the summer months, grass and weed growth is elevated. This means that the nutrients in the soil are consumed more rapidly, so you may need to fertilize your lawn more often than the rest of the year.
- Usage
The summer months typically invite exciting outdoor activities like pool time, barbecues, and outdoor picnics on the lawn. With increased lawn usage, the grass and soil may experience compaction, which may need to be addressed in time to prevent bald patches.
10 Expert Tips for Lawn Care During Summer Season
Let’s now go over ten expert tips for lawn care in Oakville during the summer that can help you keep your lawn looking healthy and lush:
- Mowing
The key to maintaining a healthy lawn is mowing it on time and right. During the summer season, the grass competes against weeds and pests for nutrients in the soil.
If you are using weed and feed fertilizers, it is important to mow your lawn regularly to about 2.5 inches to 3 inches high (no shorter than that) to ensure that the additive nutrients reach the soil and are absorbed by the grass.
Mowing your lawn too short could damage the grass’s blades, cause it stress, and encourage weed growth.
- Watering
The summer heat quickly erodes the moisture in the soil, which warrants more frequent watering of the lawn. Having said that, it is all too easy to overdo the watering while trying to keep your lawn hydrated.
A good rule of thumb is to water your lawn to an inch of water once every week. Depending on the soil condition, you can increase or decrease the frequency of watering.
It is important to prevent overwatering at all costs. Overwatering may prevent grass from absorbing the oxygen in the soil and may encourage the growth of weeds and pests.
- Mulch Grass Cutting Oakville
Mowing your grass is an excellent way to make the lawn look clean and manicured. However, when you use a mulch mower instead of bagging the cut grass, you are doing your lawn a big favor. This is because the cut grass is rich in nitrogen, which can be of great benefit to your lawn if it is returned to the soil.
The mulch grass clippings act as a natural fertilizer for your lawn, which can help you reduce the costs of fertilization later on.
- Weeding
During summer months, the weeds in your garden can quickly overtake the grass by absorbing all the necessary nutrients from the soil. The hot weather promotes the growth of weeds, which is why you must keep a keen eye out for them.
Inspect your lawn regularly to check whether there are weeds growing anywhere. If you spot weeds, take immediate action and either pull them out methodically or use weed control sprays or fertilizers to prevent them from spreading. For this reason, it is always a good idea to use pre-emergent herbicides during the spring season to control weed growth during the summer.
- Shade and Shelter
Even if your lawn has grass that is heat tolerant, direct and intense sunlight may still cause damage to the blades of grass. It can make your lawn look dull and brown. To prevent this from happening, you can consider arranging some shade and shelter for your lawn so that it may catch a break during the long days.
Consider planting trees and shrubs strategically around the perimeter of your lawn to cast a shadow over the grass at different times of the day. This will help protect your lawn from overexposure to direct sunlight.
- Aeration
Aeration is an excellent technique to improve the air and water penetration capabilities of the soil in your lawn.
As you use your lawn more frequently during the summer months, the soil becomes more compact. This may be because of pool days, outdoor barbecues, or other fun activities you do on the lawn.
In order to counter its effects on your lawn, you can rent a core aerator to aerate your lawn once during the summer months. This will ensure that when you fertilize or water your lawn, the nutrients and moisture find their way to the roots of the grass.
- Overseeding Bald Patches
No matter how well you look after your grass in the summer months, you may notice some bald patches on the lawn now and then. If this happens, you can cover those bare patches with high-quality grass seed that is resistant to the extreme heat that that patch is experiencing.
After overseeding, you need to ensure that the seeded area is kept moist consistently until you see new grass shoots sprouting up and the grass establishes itself in the patch.
- Pest Control
Summer is the ideal time for several lawn pests to make an appearance, for example, chinch bugs, grubs, and sod webworms. It is important to monitor your garden for these bothersome intruders that could severely damage your grass (or potentially kill it.)
To get rid of these pests from your lawn, you can opt for targeted insecticides or organic/biological control methods. Once they are removed, you need to double down on your lawn care practices, such as proper watering, fertilization, and aeration, to ensure the pests do not return.
- Soil Testing
After the winter months and spring stints, sometimes the soil wears out of nutrients by the time the summer season approaches. If your grass is looking particularly dull and brown for the season, conducting a soil test might help get some answers.
Based on the results of the soil test, you can adjust the weed feed and watering schedule for your lawn to best suit the needs of the grass you have planted.
- Lawn Renovation
For particularly damaged lawns or cases where no amount of lawn care in Oakville seems to be reviving the grass, you should consider lawn renovation. This process involves overseeding, aerating, topdressing with compost, and addressing soil issues to help your lawn become lush and green again.
It is much like getting a completely new lawn, but not from scratch. However, you can consider lawn renovation in partnership with only the best lawn care service companies in your area to ensure the results are at par with your expectations.
Dependable Lawn: All You Need for Summer Lawn Prep!
Summer can be particularly harsh on your lawn, especially if you haven’t been able to give it the care or preparation it needs before and during the season.
Dependable lawn, one of the leading lawn service companies in Oakville, can help look after your green cover with expert skill.
With decades of experience in Oakville’s lawn care industry, we bring a wealth of knowledge and skill to nurture your lawn to its fullest potential. Whether it’s mowing, watering, pest control, or comprehensive maintenance, we’ve got you covered.
Visit our website now to learn more!