Not sure about where you are but everywhere I look around here it's dry, cooked, straw colored grass and I'm not sure all of that is coming back. It's been a brutal hot and mostly dry summer since the start of June and the grass is really taking a beating. A lot of people around here do not irrigate lawns, normal rainfall is usually enough but not this year.

I think there's going to be a lot of reseeding and overseeding this fall way more than normal. I know the grass cutting industry has to be hurting as I see no one cutting grass now for a long time.

How is it in your area?

Not sure about there. But normally lawns will go dormant when not watered in the summer. Look dead. But will come back in the spring. Although I does feel like an extreme summer most everywhere.

Cut your grass at a high level. It's less stressful and will survive heat/drought better.

Haven’t had to mow the farm in over a month now. Our yard at home is just (barely) starting to look ratty enough that I probably should mow later this week, but it has also been over a month. I don’t really want to mow it while the grass is dying.

-Rob

Grass is doing pretty well here, a little northeast of you.
It's been hot, but we've been getting enough rain regularly.

We had our drought, I call it the season that exposes your gaps in the sprinkler system.

Now it's daily rain, so it's time to hit the yard with Fungicide on a bi-weekly basis...

Mark?

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
Cut your grass at a high level. It's less stressful and will survive heat/drought better.

I do

But this year has been the worst I've ever seen grass around here get, so much of it is really heat-stressed and way beyond the normal summer dormancy look.

It's been hotter than I like, but we've been getting pretty regular rain. Lawn still looks good, but the sandier part of the upper pasture is getting pretty crunchy.

That brown stripe you see is where I had a culvert put in the ditch between my front lawn and side lawn. The dicks that installed it backfilled it with ditch spoil and it was all sand/gravel/rocks and never grew grass worth a damn. Finally got tired of looking at it, dug down about 4 inches and backfilled with good compost and some actual loam I stole out of the garden. I seeded it, don't know if it'll take or not in this heat. If not, I'll hit it again in the Fall.

Yesterday it was mid-70's but 80+% humidity and it was just plain miserable.

Today it's 89° but the humidity is down to 56% and it's actually pretty comfortable.

About 7 years ago I totally redid my front lawn. Now it is showing signs of what is called 'climax' lawn. Oregon State U professor told me that would happen to all lawns that are not manicured, treated, and serviced constantly.
My lawn started as fescue. Now shows 4 different kinds growing. Probably imported from neighbors and mowers.

The opposite here. It's been wetter than usual. My lawn is usually semi-crispy with little growth this time of year. Helps when you only have to mow in the 100+ heat every 2-3 weeks.

But this year, it's still fully green and still requiring weekly trimmings, in the heat.

Haven't mowed since the 2nd or 3rd week of June. There's an occasional weed 4 or 5 inches tall but the grass is dormant and mostly brown.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
Cut your grass at a high level. It's less stressful and will survive heat/drought better.

This has been an unseasonably hot/dry year in the mid Atlantic. There is nothing you can do if you don't have a sprinkler system. I have many patches that are dead, dead, not just dormant. It's been brutal.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:

This has been an unseasonably hot/dry year in the mid Atlantic. There is nothing you can do if you don't have a sprinkler system. I have many patches that are dead, dead, not just dormant. It's been brutal.

Exactly. Feels like we got hammered with never ending heatwaves this summer and cool season fescue grass is just very heat stressed and giving up. I water my front lawn because it’s small and that’s barely holding on, 1 inch of water twice a week. The rest is all dormant mostly and I haven’t seen anyone mowing in weeks.

Hopefully we get some relief soon!

I'm just south of you at the PA/WV line with the same heat and lack of rain. My "lawn" is as much weeds as grass and clover and there are some areas with a bit of brown to them. I last mowed a few weeks ago with the deck raised all the way up at 5" just to cut the tops off.
It'll green up as soon as we get rain, predicted for some possibly today and or tomorrow. I hope so because the pond and stream could use it.

The trick is to start watering before the hot weather begins. It takes a lot more effort and water to bring your lawn back from dormancy than it does to prevent it from going into dormancy. My evidence is anecdotal but my lawn is green right now.

Creeping bentgrass has a really hard time in this heat. Especially the bits that get mowed in the same direction every time as it lays down in long strands and the sheaths go brown and show at mowing time.

This summer was brutal in Georgia. I think there was almost a x3 week stretch with no rain last month. We re-sodded the front yard late last year. So We had to water it a TON to keep it from dying. As it wasn't really established yet.

This week will be a test.
We've had the heat and no rain but are forecast to have rain several days this week. Much of it is some heavy thunderstorms, not a nice steady drizzle, but I'll take it at this point.

I grew up in the Upper Midwest. Dad had the 2nd nicest lawn on the block (nicest was from sod, but Dad's was from seed and years of consistent work) and from about age 10 until age 22 did more and more of the labor every year (e.g. mowing and dragging hoses). I bought my first house there and had the nicest lawn on the block since I did the backbreaking DIY sprinkler system installation project, then had a bluegrass mix hydroseeded, and did proper maintenance (watering, fertilizing, mowing, etc).

In the north, the lawns are cool season grasses (e.g. Kentucky Blue Grass) which thrive in the cooler temps in spring and fall, and they just try to survive summer. Kentucky bluegrass will go dormant at approx 85F (there are 100 cultivars of blue grass so lots of variability) to survive. It's amazing the difference between a shady spot and a 100% sunlight spot as the 100% sunlight spot will go dormant first and the shady spot will either go dormant much later or not go dormant at all.

Dormant cool season grass still needs water (e.g. rain or watering) at its roots which means deep watering (i.e. water driven down to the roots and holds it there for extended period) is preferable. In other words, you're better off doing an inch once a week rather than 1/7" 7x per week. A high mowing height (e.g. 3.5") will help shade the soil and slow down the moisture evaporation from the soil which will help too. If it just goes dormant, it'll bounce back and thrive when it cools down.

If there isn't sufficient water at the roots for extended time period, then it'll die and when it cools down all you'll have is weeds, forbes, and native grasses.

In Orlando my grass is green and tall. I think I have run my sprinklers once in the last 2 months because it has been raining so much.