Taking Care of Your Lawn This Aussie Summer
After Spring hits and the weather gets warmer, the lawns begin to grow. Then as the Australian Summer approaches a lack of lawn care tends to come to the front and the lawn starts to really brown off. If this has happened to your lawn, don’t fret, there is still time to greenify your lawn. If your lawn hasn’t browned off, maintain your duty of lawn care vigilance.
With the onset of the harsh Australian Summer, there are four main lawn activities you can undertake to ensure your lawn remains healthy:
- Lawn de-thatching – is very helpful to be done in spring and this allows the dead debris, thatch, to be removed, stimulate growth and allows any watering to penetrate the ground instead of being trapped in the thatch layer, which means you could be stunting the growth of your lawn not to mention you could very well be wasting water so precious to us all. That said, make sure you water within the restrictions of your local council, which as a general rule is only water before 9am and not before 5pm. This gives maximum use of water in the cool of the morning or better still in the longer coolness of the night.
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- Deep watering – meaning a longer period of watering eg 30- 40 minutes or so, allows for a deeper root system. A deeper root system means your lawn will have a stronger resilience to the harsh Australian Summer weather, and also means less evaporation as the water travels deeper into the soil for grass root hydration, further away from the surface.
- Wetting agents – are helpful to add to your soil as they soak into the soil providing a water attractive force to the nearby soil enabling the soil to attract and hold water for longer periods of time.
- 4. Lawn mowing height – Australians in general are known for mowing their lawns low. Some of our colleagues here joke to our USA visitors that Australians like to mow low enough to see the root system. Although this is an exaggeration, a low cut lawn is more susceptible to being overcome by bindiis and other weeds. Mowing at a higher level, so that there is some bounce or padding in the grass, helps the lawn to fight and choke out such lawn nasties, as well as help it to resist continuous days of harsh heat.
Heads up:
- Don’t apply fertilisers or weed sprays during the peak of summer or really hot days as this will place your lawn under a lot of stress and will do more harm than good.
- If your lawn gets a beating from the Sun facing numerous continuous days, it is ideal to give the lawn a deep watering, within your local council guidelines or water restrictions.
Keeping these four main lawn duties of care, will help ensure your lawn stays healthy and green during our harsh Australian Summers.