Summer is usually the most popular time to landscape both homes and businesses. It is also time for common summer landscaping problems to pop up. Droughts, wet ground, weeds, and incorrect watering can all cause your beautiful summer landscape plans to go awry. The summer solstice was last week and the heat has certainly turned up in many of the northeast states. We will be doing a series of blogs on common seasonal landscape problems. Obviously, our first one is 5 common summer landscaping problems.
- Compacted and dry soil: High temperatures and decreased rainfall can cause the soil around your shrubs and trees to become compacted. This causes air and water to not be able to reach the tree and shrub’s roots. You’ll need to correct this by aerating and watering the compacted soil. If the weather remains dry, you will likely have to follow up with more waterings.
- You water at the wrong time of day: Watering in the early morning or after sunset is best in summer. The reason for this is that water that hits the grass when the sun is out is more likely to evaporate before hitting the grasses’ roots. You’ll want to soak your grass thoroughly the night before if you hear of an oncoming heatwave to help mitigate damage.
- You forget to mulch: Mulch can help eliminate a lot of common summer landscaping problems. It can prevent moisture evaporation, insulate the soil and roots from extreme heat, and reduces weed growth. The best part about mulch is it can also keep the soil and roots healthy in the winter.
- Your grass goes dormant: During hot and dry summer conditions, cool-season grasses can end up going dormant. If your grass suddenly turns brown, don’t try to irrigate it unless you plan to do so for the rest of the summer. Also, remember that shifts out of dormancy, it makes it more susceptible to stress because the roots are depleted of food.
- Your lawn is overrun with weeds: Taking care of summer weeds actually starts in the late spring. Start pulling them as soon as they start to pop up. During the summer, letting your lawn grow a little higher will actually inhibit weed growth because sunlight has a harder time reaching the soil. This, will, in turn, make it harder for weeds to develop. If mowing and pulling aren’t helping your lawn’s growing weed problem, you might want to invest in a weed killer and then reseed after.
You can check out all of our lawn and landscape products to make your summer a success!