Deep Summer Lawn Care Guide For Cool Season Grass Types

hello my name is brian moutz i run turfmechanic.com in this channel and today i'm coming to you with a guide to summer lawn care for cool season grasses this video is primarily targeted to people up north who are running kentucky bluegrass perennial rye fine fescue or tall fescue the thing is when you're living up north we have really long days now our cold season grasses go dormant through the winter and they can stand up to extremely cold freezing temperatures and then they come back every spring but during the summer even up north we can experience a lot of heat and a lot of drought and some places the country experience a lot of humidity and this can be a problem for virtually all of the cold season grasses some places experience a lot of rain the problem with a lot of that rain is various locations around the country get that rain at in opportune times during the day let's say for instance a late afternoon thunderstorm that hits at like six o'clock in the late afternoon or early evening this can be a challenge for a variety of reasons no matter where you live no matter what grass type you have no matter what environmental challenges you're dealing with throughout the summer this video should help you at a base level i'm going to provide you simple tips that's going to apply a pro across the board to all of these northern grass types so that you can have a better chance at getting through the summer with as little damage as possible remember fall is the best time for cold season grasses and we want to go into the fall not in recovery mode but we want to go into the fall as strong as possible unlike warm season grasses all cold season grasses go into a state of summer dormancy if the heat gets too high and the watering or the irrigation or the rainfall is too low this is very common and it's nothing to be alarmed about but it is something that a lot of people think is uh the death of their grass as homeowners see their thermometer go higher and weeks and weeks pass without rain and their grass starts going brown then they start worrying that their grass is actually dying this is summer dormancy it's what grass types from the north do to protect themselves during these periods of summer stress we call this summer stress cold season grasses grow really their best between around 60 70 degrees with a little bit of buffering on either end of that spectrum so when temperatures get above 80 85 especially 90 and you're not irrigating the lawn very frequently then your grass type will want to go dormant now if you cannot reliably get water on your grass and your temperatures are consistently over 90 degrees during the daytime don't fight it just let your your lawn go brown just let it go dormant that's right i'm a lawn care guy here on youtube let your lawn go dormant don't fight it you don't want to be cutting your grass very often you don't want to be watering it very often you don't want to be fertilizing it at all if your lawn is going to be going dormant now if your lawn does go dormant you can't not water it just don't water it as often as you would if you're trying to keep it green and growing like you see here in my lawn my lawn is a mixture of perennial ryan kentucky bluegrass and i have had three weeks straight of 90 to 100 degree weather and yet i've kept this green and growing the whole time simply because i've been doing lawn applications throughout the past year and a half the support the root systems of my grass so that it's easier to get through this summer stress if you can't get through the summer stress don't worry about it don't fight it let it go dormant it will come back in the fall now if however you're like me and you can irrigate your lawn reliably or maybe you're getting reliable rainfall and you believe that you can keep your grass growing and green throughout the summer without going into summer dormancy then the next thing that we need to talk about is irrigation practices and how we marry the irrigation practices to our environment to the humidity to the dryness or to the rain patterns of our area for cold season grasses up north the timing and intensity of your summer rains are going to be incredibly important and are going to really change the way that person a deals with their lawn versus person b in humid environments this is also going to be an enormous factor as well i live in a in an environment that is not humid this is not a full desert but it is quite dry here if however you live in a humid environment let's say for instance like kansas city missouri or some place in the northern south i don't know maybe like north carolina then humidity is going to be an enormous factor because what we want to do for cold season lines over the course of the summer is do everything we possibly can to keep the soil moist and plenty of water in the grass root zone but we don't want the grass blades to be wet for very long and we certainly don't want the grass blades to be wet later in the day all northern grass types are going to do their best when they get one to one and a half inches of rain in or water into the root zone of the grass every single week during the spring and the fall i prefer to do this all at once one time per day every seven to eight days or so is what i do here my lawn to get an inch of water into the root zone if however you happen to live in a humid environment that happens to get late afternoon rains and thunderstorms then this can be a problem simply because you can't rely on a thunderstorm to happen every seventh day in the morning for places like this i suggest that you plan your irrigation around the rainstorms if you're expecting a rainstorm on say a wednesday afternoon and that rainstorm happens to be small your grass blades are going to be wet at that time anyway you might as well do your watering while the grass blades are already wet at the end of the at the end of the afternoon if you're going to go into the evening with wet grass blades in a humid environment that is the perfect breeding ground for fungal problems in a lawn there's no reason to water the next morning or two mornings later if your grass blades are already wet in the evening on say that wednesday just water at the same time unless you're going to be getting one to two inches of rain all at once then you turn that watering that irrigation schedule off for the week on the other hand in a case like mine where you live in a dry climate and you don't expect to have rain hardly ever during the summer then it's really important to stick to a very rigid irrigation schedule first thing in the morning the way that i do it here in my lawn is i turn my irrigation on at about four o'clock in the morning before the sun rises that way the cycle ends right after the sun comes up so that everything can get dried off really quickly before i even get out of bed because i live in a dry environment in a not humid environment then that means that my grass blades dry off much quicker than in humid environments so i don't really have to worry that much about fungus in my lawn for me i don't even put fungicide down in my lawn because my environmental factors make it so easy for that not to be a major issue a major concern the goal here or the thing to keep in mind no matter where you live whether it be a humid environment with lots of rain or a dry environment with very little rain is we want to get adequate moisture into the lawn so if it's if you're getting afternoon rains and you're humid then you need to marry your irrigation practices to the rains that you're actually getting if you're getting rains in the afternoon add supplemental water at the same time so that you can get to that inch inch and a half that you need kentucky bluegrass is going to be more in lines of needing an inch and a half of water in the root zone every single week if you're running like a turf type tall fescue then you might be closer to one inch of water perennial rye will be somewhere in between if however you're running a fine fescue you're likely growing that in a shady environment you're probably not going to need as much water for that either simply because it's in the shade and you're not going to be experiencing the same amount of evaporation in the shade as you are in the full sun because rainy locations tend to get rain at various parts of the day especially in the late afternoon and evening it's best to do your irrigation during them if the rain is coming in small amounts for drier environments like myself it's important to get the irrigation down as early in the day as possible simply because drier environments will evaporate much faster so to keep the water down in the root zone of the soil we need to get the irrigation onto the lawn before the sun and the dryness of the air sucks it out of the soil your irrigation system is going to be different than mine your irrigation system is going to be different than your neighbors you need to check your own irrigation system to find out how much water each zone puts down onto the lawn this is especially important for cold season grasses in sunny dry environments for instance that zone over there takes three hours to put one inch of water down this zone takes four hours to put one inch of water down the other zone of my house takes two hours to put one inch of water down you need to understand which zone of your irrigation system takes the longest if it takes too long to go through all of the zones on your irrigation system before say nine o'clock ten o'clock eleven o'clock in the morning then you need to separate your irrigation out by the day say for instance zone a might be on mondays and zone b and c might be on tuesdays because if you do it all at once then the last zone is getting watered too late in the morning and you're going to be experiencing too much evaporative loss remember no matter what your environmental factors are if you can get moisture into the soil every five to six days that is better for your lawn than getting it in every two to three days now we can't control mother nature but if mother nature allows for it we want a longer duration between sessions of water on the grass we want to keep the leaf blades dry as much as possible but we want to keep the soil moist as long as possible if you're into buying product for your lawn hydrotane is one of the most common products put down on the lawn to retain moisture in the soil it's what i use in my lawn and what i recommend to my viewers now there are alternatives to hydrotane which i have linked down below in the description hydrating is not for everybody and you don't need it but it will help retain moisture in the soil which can help a lot it helps me move my watering schedule back to closer to once every week even in the heat of summer the worst of all dry heat that we receive here i can still push it to every fourth day between waterings usually throughout the summer i'm on day six for every watering session if you anticipate maintaining the best lawn possible year after year after year then a more aggressive strategy something that i also do is to core air at the lawn now i correlate the lawn in the early spring basically at the end of winter but more applicable to this video is at the end of summer i will be core aerating again as we go into fall but core aerating isn't the thing that i'm talking about here it's top dressing it with biochar directly after core aerating lung biochar is a product that is derived from essentially burning wood in a no oxygen environment it creates a special form of charcoal if we can core aerate then that means that we create little channels into the lawn when we top dress with biochar we can push the biochar into those channels the biochar then holds and traps moisture under the soil surface so when we water the root systems of our grass can tap into water that will not evaporate away or drain away the way that it would in other environments not only does the biochar hold on to water below the soil surface in the root zone but it will also hold on to nutrients so summer fertilization in subsequent years can be much less you don't have to worry about it as much because there's always something in there for the root systems of our grass to tap into now with that being said if our grass is green and growing we need to start talking about mowing now mowing is one of those things that a lot of people think of as a chore something that they don't want to do other people love doing it's a form of relaxation for me it's a little bit of a both it is a chore this is my business but this is also something that i do to keep the lawn healthy for the family just like it's like doing the laundry i enjoy it and it needs to be done if i'm going to do it though i want to do it so that it's healthiest for the grass this is important sharpen your mower blades do you have an angle grinder do you have a file like a metal file in the garage if not go off to the local discount store in your town and buy the cheapest one possible because literally with a socket wrench you could pull the mower blade off of your mower and sharpen it the reason for that is a sharper mower blade is going to cut grass cleaner it's not going to rip it's not going to shred and when it cuts clean then you're going to have less moisture loss with the cut so when you cut a grass blade moisture is lost out of it until the grass blade kind of heals itself i don't know it's kind of like cutting yourself on the arm you're going to bleed a little bit until the skin heals if you can get a clean cut it will heal itself faster and you'll have less moisture loss not only are you going to have less moisture loss but because you've got a clean cut your grass blades are going to be able to resist disease a lot better grass that is shredded by a dull mower blade is far more likely to experience fungal problems or other kinds of disease issues throughout the rest of the summer and into the fall then grass that is cut clean it literally only takes about five minutes to yank a mower blade off and sharpen it up it doesn't take that much time if it takes you 30 minutes to mow your grass a lot 35 to the process not that big of a deal now assuming that you have a sharp mower blade and you're not over fertilizing your lawn the next best practice for mowing your lawn throughout the middle of the summer is to raise the height up just a little bit so if you're regularly mowing the grass on like say for instance the third setting on your lawnmower move it up to the fourth setting maybe the fifth setting and mow it slightly less frequently if you're mowing the grass every third day in the spring maybe start mowing it every fifth day in the summer if you're mowing the grass every fifth day in the spring mow it every seventh day in the summer this is going to allow for your grass to be a little bit taller and when you cut it down you're not cutting it quite as low you're going to be cutting it less frequently so you're not going to be having that evaporative loss with every cut so every time you sever a grass blade it's got to heal itself but you're not going to be cutting it as often so the grass blades are going to be taller generally which is going to shade the soil a little bit more limiting evaporative loss so if we're watering it less frequently cutting it less frequently it's growing a little bit less vigorously we're able to trap moisture into the soil zone for longer periods of time your lawn is going to fare better over the course of the entire summer now of course a lot of the frequency of your mowing is going to be dictated by the i don't know the speed that your grass is growing and the speed of your grasses growth is highly dictated by the amount of nourishment you've given it how much fertilizer are you putting on what kind of fertilizer are you putting on now i have videos about summer fertilization i'll link to them down in the description below i suggest you take a look at it but the summary is if you don't think your grass is going to stay green and growing through the summer then don't fertilize but if you do plan on keeping your grass active throughout the summer then you should be fertilizing but with a slow release organic fertilizer typically that fertilizer is going to be high in potassium potassium is the nutrient that grass typically uses as like the main driver for its immune system it allows for disease and stress resistance it helps the cellular structure of the plant be a little bit more robust and sturdy i mean you can trample on grass and let it go a couple extra days between irrigation sessions it can handle heat a little bit higher than grass that isn't well nourished in potassium if you're going to be fertilizing in the summer use something high in potassium i put down a lot of liquid aeration products which are high in potassium there are dedicated summer stress blend fertilizers that are heavy in potassium and low in nitrogen phosphorus i recommend those as options as well but generally speaking organics are fantastic ways to go this summer i used a product called lawn luxe lawn lux is a organic product that is an even split between nitrogen and potassium with no phosphorous but it's all slow release organics so it doesn't just like push heavy growth really quickly if you're fertilizing for stress resistance then you probably don't have anything to worry about with excessive growth through the summer stay away from fast release nitrogen fertilizers that are going to push unnecessary growth they're going to stress your lawn out more and you don't want to have to deal with that in the middle of the heat and potentially the drought of july and august now regardless of the fact that your lawn is dormant or not dormant through the summer whether it's hot or cold no matter how much you're watering or fertilizing the lawn summer weed pressure is very common up north it's this common everywhere wheat pressure is something that everyone's going to deal with a little bit differently everyone's going to have different weeds in their lawn now early in the spring maybe mid-spring lots of people who are on the ball put down a weed pre-emergent so if you see in my lawn i don't have a lot of weed pressure but i do if i get really close i could show you a handful of weeds throughout the lunch you can't really see them on camera unless i go out of my way to show them to you they are there weed pre-emergents stop the bulk of weed pressure but no matter what you put down i don't care who you are where you live you're going to end up having random weeds starting to show up throughout the middle of the summer and it's hard to deal with them with weed killer products because in the middle of the summer wheat products don't work very well when temperatures get extremely high they're stressful on the grass they don't really work all that great on the weeds themselves they truly are best applied when temperatures are more moderate somewhere in that 70 to 80 degree range as opposed to 90 to 100 degrees let's talk about what to do about them hey before we finish this video my favorite chicken and i wanted to ask you to hit that like button you're in pretty deep might as well hit the button weed pressure can be pretty intense for those people keep lawns who did not put down a weed pre-emergent in the spring even for people like those people like me i did put down a weed pre-emergent in the spring and i still have to deal with weeds here in the yard not as many and they're not as obvious but they're still there one of the reasons that this is hard is because weed killer sprays things of products that we spray on the lawn whether it be natural or chemical in nature they all work well in moderate temperatures spring and fall style temperatures middle of summer temperatures make it really hard to apply these products to kill the weeds and not damage the grass now if you do have a few days in the middle of the summer where high temperatures only get into the mid 80s then those are the perfect days especially on the mornings of those days to apply weed killer sprays to spot spray on individual weeds that you find in the yard however what i suggest what i think is best is to just wait to the fall to deal with them and then put down a pre-emergent the following spring in the summer the way that we deal with them is to pull the weeds that are easy to pull to pull the seed heads off of the weeds that are starting to flower and even more importantly and more easily done is to use our lawn mowers with the bagger setting on the highest setting possible higher than when we cut our grass remember during the summer we don't really want to cut the grass more often and we don't want to cut it lower but weeds do tend to grow a little bit taller and a little bit faster than our grass does so whenever there's a weed growing in the lawn usually the seed head pops up above the level of the grass if you can put your lawnmower bag on raise the setting up to the highest setting possible and mow the weeds themselves only every now and then throughout the summer then you're going to be cutting off the flower heads or the seed heads that are going to go and put seed down and become weeds next year if you do want to go the spray route if you've got a very healthy lawn that is not struggling at all even if the temperature gets up to about 90 degrees you can usually apply weed killer sprays on a spot treatment basis and your lawn will probably be just fine so long as you apply those products in the wee hours of the morning again this is only going to be worthwhile for those people who have really healthy green grass that is not stressed out from the summer heat or drought typically the natural products which use iron are going to be a little bit harder on the lawn than the chemical products which is a little bit ironic if you ask me but it is the case from my experience generally speaking once you get into mid to late summer if you've got a lot of weeds really the best course of action is just pull those seed heads off and hope that next year you have fewer weeds because you eliminated the seed head problem you don't want these annual weeds to spread their seed and become a problem next year now towards the end of summer where i live that's around mid mid to late august and in other places it might be closer to early september maybe even mid-september if you live down south running a cool season lawn these are the places and this is the time of year that you can really start assessing the lawn damage that you have in your lawn if any during the middle of july in the early part of august if you have brown spots that you think have died off they might not have died off completely they might start coming back as temperatures start coming down by the end of summer you can truly see the spots that aren't recovering and this is the perfect time to do an overseeding project over seeding or repairing dead patches in the lawn in the early parts of fall or the very end of summer is the easiest time of the year to do it don't make the mistake of looking at a brown spot in your lawn and thinking it's died in the month of july or early august if it's still there by mid-september that's when you know you need to take some action right away where i live i take that action towards the end of august you're going to have to watch your temperatures for the best time for you this usually is when high temperatures start dropping down into the low 80s and upper 70s the soil temperatures are still at their peak so everything is going to germinate very easily and once it germinates that grass the baby grass is going to grow vigorously now ideally you won't have to over seed at all again fall is the best time for cool season lines what we do want however is to be exiting summer on the strongest footing possible we want our lawns to be looking their best doing their best going into fall so we can have the strongest best fall season possible now there are other lawn care tips that are applicable to summer grub control fungicides things like this are very unique and very specific to certain lawn circumstances i'll have other videos about those and i already have some other videos about those topics on this channel if you hit the like button you're more likely to be notified of more videos that are relevant to you so i suggest that you do that anyway i hope this was helpful please hit that subscribe button if you haven't already and i hope to see you in another video down the road

Channel: Turf Mechanic

Views: 16,330

Keywords: grass, lawncare, gardening, lawnmower, lawn mower, lawn care, thatch

Id: RHh-JXqKJkk

Length: 23min 26sec (1406 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 18 2021