Posted : Thursday, August 12, 2010
The Wall Street Journal Weighs In on Summer Heat
While we’ve been beating this drum for a little while now, even The Wall Street Journal has taken notice and written up a piece on the struggles faced by grass around the country in the summer of 2010.
Posted : Monday, July 12, 2010
It’s the Heat, not the water…
This is the time of year when lawns brown out even when they are getting adequate water. The common assumption is that lawns won’t turn brown if they get plenty of water. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Now it’s the heat. Even if your irrigation system is perfect, it’s still too hot. The lawns aren’t turning brown from lack of water. They are turning brown from excessive heat.
Imagine cranking up your oven to 100 degrees, then placing a few well-watered houseplants inside. They won’t last long, even with plenty of water. Your lawn was inside that oven for a week. Reseeding isn’t an option either, as seed will fare even worse in these sauna like conditions.
Let us know if your lawn is browning out. We want to take a look to make sure we’re aware of its status. This way, we can plan for greening the lawn up again as soon as the weather becomes more favorable.
Posted : Monday, July 5, 2010
Hello from the 2010 Sauna
Here we go! For the first time in several years, we’re looking at the head of what promises to be a brutal monster of a heat wave. While we always get brief spells of uncomfortably hot weather, we rarely face a stretch of near 100 degree weather that promises to last through the forseeable future. Make no mistake, lawns will suffer as a result.
Unfortunately, there’s not much of anything that can be done to counteract this kind of heat. Heavy watering will only combine the heat with lots of water, making your lawn a prime breeding ground for disease causing fungus. Too little water will allow the lawn to burn out quickly. We recommend that you increase watering times by about 20%, but no more.
We of course wish that there was something we could apply that would help brace the lawn against this natural stress, but there isn’t. In fact, if you took some grass from your lawn and transported it to Florida (or Arizona, Mexico, etc), you’d see that even under the absolute best of care, it wouldn’t last a full year. The grasses in CT lawns are simply not made to withstand this kind of heat, just as the southern grasses aren’t able to handle winter freezing.
Keep yourself cool and healthy, and let’s all hope that this spell passes quickly and with minimal damage.
Posted : Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Lawns are Going Dormant!
Transcript: Written June 8, 2010.
We have received very little water this year. Unfortunately the weather forecast keeps predicting water, so a lot of people have it in their minds that we have gotten a lot more than we actually did. The result of this lack of water of course is that lawns are turning brown and going dormant, as seen in the video clip.
What is dormancy? It is actually a survival mechanism by which the lawn sort of hibernates in order to survive tougher weather. While that’s actually a great thing from a survival standpoint, from an aesthetic standpoint it’s not so nice. When a lawn goes dormant, it is going into survival mode where it takes all the juices and liquids that were in the blades making them nice and healthy and it is sucking them back into the crown and roots so the grass can survive the dry weather.
Once all the juices and liquids are sucked out of the grass blades, it’s kind of like popping a water balloon. You can’t fill them back up again. What you are left with is a bunch of brown blades of grass that are not going to green up again. However, the grass will produce new green shoots when it does get enough water. Now that’s great, but the problem is that the new shoots of grass are going to come from the crowns and the roots and it’s going to take them a few weeks to grow up through the brown stuff to green up your whole lawn again.
If you are at all unsure of about how much water you should be using, start by watering each section of your lawn for 45 minutes, 3 times per week. See where that takes you. If the lawn gets really nice, lush, and green, great! You can back off a little bit. If it’s still kind of brown and dry, you can give us a call so we can take a look at it to make sure there are no other problems, or go ahead and boost it up to maybe 4 times a week to see what that does. But remember, if the lawn has already gone dormant it’s going to take a few weeks to green up again. If it hasn’t, good! You are ahead of the game. -Chris Brown
Posted : Monday, April 26, 2010
Compost - Nature’s Original Fertilizer
Interested in composting your lawn? Download and print our convenient calculator below to find out how much you’ll need.
Would you like to learn more about Compost and the incredible benefits it has to offer? Follow our link below.
Posted : Thursday, August 20, 2009
Core Aeration
One of the best practices you can engage in each year is core aeration. It loosens soil, reduces thatch, and allows for effective seeding to build and thicken your lawn. For a more thorough and detailed explanation as to the benefits of Core Aeration, check out the link below.
Posted : Friday, July 18, 2008
MTE: Grubs in July?
I received a question from a New Milford, CT homeowner who asked about the possibility of grubs in his property, and the right way to control them. Check out the response!
