Beating the Heat: 7 Tips for Heat-Proofing Your Yard
A bright green lawn has long been a staple of the American Dream, but the summer’s harsh heat can turn your dream yard into a browning and dehydrated nightmare. If you have a regional lawn for the warmer months, brushing up on life-extending and vibrancy-boosting techniques is key to a never-ending summer. Here are seven tips for heat-proofing your yard and keeping your lawn the envy of the neighborhood.
1. Select a heat-tolerant seed
Not all grass is created equal. Identifying a heat-tolerant seed to grow is crucial to a successful lawn season. Avoid grasses that germinate and green quickly but do not fare well in the heat. Otherwise, you’ll be left with brown spots, discoloration, and weeds.
Choose a more heat-tolerant seed to elude sun stress. To ensure you handpick the grass seed best suited to your lawn needs, buy grass seed online from a trusted retailer. Shopping for grass seed online is a worthwhile consideration, as you can shop from the comfort of your recliner or knee-deep in nutrient-rich soil. Additionally, buying online allows you to compare seed varieties side-by-side based on maturity and region-specificity.
Once you’ve settled on an online grass seed provider, dig deeper into heat-tolerant seed varieties. Bermuda grass is an eco-friendly choice for water-sensitive growers and is one of the most heat-tolerant grasses known to thrive during dry spells and droughts. It bounces back quickly when watered and stands up well to heavy traffic. Buffalo grass also requires very little water but is not as resilient to sneakers as a Bermuda seed.
2. Identify the patterns of your region
Grass that fares well in Florida is not meant for planting in Iowa, so understanding the climate patterns of your region is vital when choosing the correct variety of grass. If you live in a warmer area, chances are water becomes scarce in the summer. With these moisture limitations in mind, choosing a grass that does not require much water, like Buffalo, Bermuda, or Zoysia, is ideal for drought-prone areas. If your region tends to be cooler and shadier, you can opt for a less water-sensitive strain, such as Kentucky bluegrass, or a variation of fescue.
3. Brace for unexpected heat waves
While weather patterns can be pretty consistent, our ever-changing climate is changing the way we predict heat. Heatwaves are impacting regions and decimating crops that are not heat tolerant. To plan for the future, you need to prepare for the unexpected.
Once you’ve identified the correct seed for your lawn and have charted out a consistent watering schedule on your calendar, keep an eye on your lawn if the heat peaks above normal. You may need to drag out the sprinkler hose for a couple of extra hours and treat your lawn’s yellow spots with a grow formula.
While maintaining a consistent lawn maintenance schedule is vital to the health of your yard, keeping a finger on the seed’s pulse will help you identify its needs when the heat changes.
4. Prepare in the spring
An emerald-green lawn takes time, and putting in a few extra hours of hard work in the spring will ensure your grass grows healthy roots to survive the summer. It’s essential to clean up your lawn from any leftover debris from the fall and winter, like dead leaves and seed pods. Thinking ahead will ensure that nothing but bright green grass grows. Using a pre-fertilizer and weed-killer from your local hardware store also sets up the soil for success.
5. Trim consciously
You’ve got an extra ten dollars to spare, and the kid next door has a lawn-mowing business for the summer. It sounds like a match made in heaven, right? Wrong.
If you want to ensure the success of your grass, you’ll have to commit to trimming the shards yourself. Mowing often, early on in the summer, will encourage the grass to grow. If you leave the leaves to sprout up high on their own, the chances that you will stunt the roots of your grass are high. Throughout the summer, keep on a regular mowing schedule. Mow every five, six, or seven days, depending on your lawn’s needs, but be prepared to adjust when needed.
6. Water wisely
Water intake varies with different grass varieties. If you are planting consciously for your region, you should know how much water your lawn needs to thrive. If you live in an area where droughts are common, opting for a drought-conscious variety of grass is the way to go. Summer droughts often lead to water restrictions anyway, so thinking ahead will save your yard from a brown and dead summer.
For optimal vibrancy, try to avoid using your sprinklers in broad daylight. Watering at night ensures that your lawn soaks in all its water needs. The water will trickle down into the roots without evaporating first. With this watering strategy, your lawn has all night to use the water as needed and store some extra to keep it safe in the summer sun.
7. Limit lawn traffic
While nothing screams summer like running around on a bright green lawn, excessive lawn traffic can be detrimental to your soil. The steady impact of footprints can cause the soil to become too compact, preventing roots from growing and water from being stored and absorbed.
To avert backyard disasters, keep an eye on routes your family likes to take to cut through the lawn. Creating designated pathways from the back door to the swing set or the front door to the sidewalk will ensure the lasting success of your overall yard while sacrificing small sections of it to foot traffic. Next year, plan on creating stone walkways for those high-traffic areas.
Final thoughts – Heat-Proofing Your Yard
“The grass is always greener on the other side,” is the remark of every envious neighbor sneaking a peak at your vibrant lawn. If you take the extra time to heat-proofing your yard, then they will all be correct. Heat patterns are changing, so adapting to heatwaves and unexpected droughts are crucial to ensuring your grass stays shining green all summer long. Not to mention, with the help of heat-proof seed for your region, you’ll be well on your way to a lifetime of healthy grass.
