Sirhornsalot
**The Official Horn Sports Landscaper and Landscap
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- Nov 6, 2013
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Beat the August heat! Here's how!
The brunt of summer is upon us with extreme heat temperatures and a lack of rainfall to compound the issue. This column will offer up some tips on how to help your landscape beat the heat.
And you can beat the heat, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t.
Watering
You should be watering in the evenings, starting around 11 p.m.. This allows the turf, plants and water to be together for an extended period of time. It works to replenish the moisture lost during the day and plants are able to cope better with the heat.
If you are told that this puts your lawn at risk of lawn fungus, end the conversation. With 100 degree heat and 20% humidity, there is no way lawn fungus could ever survive, even if you literally tried to make fungus.
The evening start time is something we do from June through end of August. It is a difference maker. On Labor Day normally, we will switch back to morning starts. But this year, we should make that call based on weather conditions at that time. If it’s still hot, keep it starting at night.
Watering run times should be around 20 minutes for spray heads, 45 minutes for rotor heads, and around 50 minutes for drips, depending on how long the drip line is.
I have seen great success by watering every other night in this heat.
For those of you who fear water restrictions, maybe you’re told to water on two days during the week. You cannot possibly hope to keep things alive on two waterings each week. Your lawn and landscape plants will slowly begin to die. Remember, you have an investment to protect. What you can do is water as you think you need to. If you want to keep that to two days, then create two waterings per day on those two days, which would give you 4 waterings per week. You can do this by utilizing both Program A and Program B on your control panel. Set up Program A to water at 6 a.m. Set up Program B to water at 8 p.m. on the same day.
If you can, it would help to manually water some things that may look to be struggling, such as young trees or shrubs.
It is important to keep your blade sharp, especially during this heat. A Drimmel tool makes quick work of it.
Lawn Mowing
Mowing your lawn short during extreme heat like we have is just like issuing a death sentence to your grass. The grass just can’t survive when the sun is allowed to bake the soil surface, which it does when grass is short. When grass is longer, it actually shades the soil surface, slowing down the evaporation process and reducing stress in the turf.
Set your mower to a cutting height of at least 3.5 inches or even 4 inches. Anything shorter than that will cause stress in the turf. Later, when things cool down, we will be able to drop the height. But for now, we save our turf by mowing higher.
Make sure that one of your waterings is right after your lawn is mowed. Cutting the grass creates a wound on the blade. If it is allowed to dry out in the heat, the tips will become fringed and brown. The watering after the mow speeds up the healing process and you’ll avoid the brown ends on the blades.
Make sure your blade is sharp. When your blade is dull, the cut is not a cut, but a tear instead. When you tear the grass blade, you cause stress in the grass which will cause predator insects to move in for the kill. A sharp blade creates a clean cut on the blade, reducing stress and enabling fast recovery.
The white crusty substance on the trunks of this Crape Myrtle is actually an insect called Scale.
Insects
As we talked about last month, we are in the middle of a Chinch bug infestation. I see it in almost every neighborhood I drive through. You can know what this looks like by noticing the suffering grass areas has a bronze hue or tint to it. That is the classic sign of Chinch Bugs. If you see this in your lawn, call your landscape professional and tell him he needs to spray the areas with a Bifenythrin product. We spray the directly affected areas as well as a 1 foot parameter around the areas in case the Chinch are migrating into the fresh green grass.
You will find this insect only in the sunniest, hottest places in the lawn. The areas that have shade, they will avoid. They like being close to concrete as concrete radiates heat. The hotter it is, the more active they are. They sit atop the grass blades and suck the sap/water substance from the grass plant, killing it.
The healthier your lawn is, the less you’ll see of these critters. If your lawn is in distress from lack of water, you can bet you’ll see them move in.
To eradicate them, an additional spray will need to be performed one week after the first spray. Our Bifenythrin product kills Chinch bugs, but not the eggs. If you spray a week after the first spray, you can kill the hatchlings before they’re old enough to lay eggs.
Landscape plants
Keep an eye on your landscape plants, particularly any young trees you may have. It would be good to provide them with extra water during this time. A good routine to have is to saturate a tree’s rootball once a week, in addition to your regular watering.
When landscape plants go into distress, predator insects also pick up on that, like they do with turf. Aphids, Scale, Spider Mites are the culprits that attack our landscapes. Pay close attention to any Crape Myrtles you might have. Scale, which looks like a white crust substance but is actually an insect, attaches itself to the trunk of a Crape Myrtle and lives off the moisture/sap of the tree. You’ll find them up and down the trunk and limbs.
Both aphids and scale produce a sugary substance that they secrete onto the tree bark. This sugary substance draws in ants and other insects. It can also cause “black soot mold” which causes the bark to become blackened. Treat the insect issue with the same Bifenythrin product and use a liquid fungicide for the black soot mold.
If you have Hostas in your landscape beds and the leaves of those Hostas appear to have holes eaten into the leaves, you have a snail/slugg problem. Set out some snail bait and your Hostas will return to normal.
Fertilization/Pre-emergent
August is the month when we apply our third and final round of fertilizer for the season. We will also apply our second round of pre-emergent for the year. You can put both products down at the same time, they will not affect each other.
However, this year I’m going to encourage you to wait until the heat breaks before putting down the fertilizer. If that is the last week of the month or even in September, we need to wait until the 100s go away.
Fertilizer helps grass for sure, but not in this type of heat. Fertilizer causes grass/plants to require more water. So we definitely want to wait until the heat breaks or our grass will just burn up.
When you apply your fertilizer, water the lawn for two nights in a row to get the product dissolved into the soil.
Whatever your normal spreader setting is for your fertilizer product, go one notch below the recommended setting. We don’t need to put down as much fertilizer as usual with the last application. Applying a normal rate or heavier rate could cause some lawn fungus problems in September because nitrogen in fertilizer is like gas to fire as far as lawn fungus goes. We want a light ratio and get it into the soil so we don’t have to worry with fungus.
The brunt of summer is upon us with extreme heat temperatures and a lack of rainfall to compound the issue. This column will offer up some tips on how to help your landscape beat the heat.
And you can beat the heat, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t.
Watering
You should be watering in the evenings, starting around 11 p.m.. This allows the turf, plants and water to be together for an extended period of time. It works to replenish the moisture lost during the day and plants are able to cope better with the heat.
If you are told that this puts your lawn at risk of lawn fungus, end the conversation. With 100 degree heat and 20% humidity, there is no way lawn fungus could ever survive, even if you literally tried to make fungus.
The evening start time is something we do from June through end of August. It is a difference maker. On Labor Day normally, we will switch back to morning starts. But this year, we should make that call based on weather conditions at that time. If it’s still hot, keep it starting at night.
Watering run times should be around 20 minutes for spray heads, 45 minutes for rotor heads, and around 50 minutes for drips, depending on how long the drip line is.
I have seen great success by watering every other night in this heat.
For those of you who fear water restrictions, maybe you’re told to water on two days during the week. You cannot possibly hope to keep things alive on two waterings each week. Your lawn and landscape plants will slowly begin to die. Remember, you have an investment to protect. What you can do is water as you think you need to. If you want to keep that to two days, then create two waterings per day on those two days, which would give you 4 waterings per week. You can do this by utilizing both Program A and Program B on your control panel. Set up Program A to water at 6 a.m. Set up Program B to water at 8 p.m. on the same day.
If you can, it would help to manually water some things that may look to be struggling, such as young trees or shrubs.
It is important to keep your blade sharp, especially during this heat. A Drimmel tool makes quick work of it.
Lawn Mowing
Mowing your lawn short during extreme heat like we have is just like issuing a death sentence to your grass. The grass just can’t survive when the sun is allowed to bake the soil surface, which it does when grass is short. When grass is longer, it actually shades the soil surface, slowing down the evaporation process and reducing stress in the turf.
Set your mower to a cutting height of at least 3.5 inches or even 4 inches. Anything shorter than that will cause stress in the turf. Later, when things cool down, we will be able to drop the height. But for now, we save our turf by mowing higher.
Make sure that one of your waterings is right after your lawn is mowed. Cutting the grass creates a wound on the blade. If it is allowed to dry out in the heat, the tips will become fringed and brown. The watering after the mow speeds up the healing process and you’ll avoid the brown ends on the blades.
Make sure your blade is sharp. When your blade is dull, the cut is not a cut, but a tear instead. When you tear the grass blade, you cause stress in the grass which will cause predator insects to move in for the kill. A sharp blade creates a clean cut on the blade, reducing stress and enabling fast recovery.
The white crusty substance on the trunks of this Crape Myrtle is actually an insect called Scale.
Insects
As we talked about last month, we are in the middle of a Chinch bug infestation. I see it in almost every neighborhood I drive through. You can know what this looks like by noticing the suffering grass areas has a bronze hue or tint to it. That is the classic sign of Chinch Bugs. If you see this in your lawn, call your landscape professional and tell him he needs to spray the areas with a Bifenythrin product. We spray the directly affected areas as well as a 1 foot parameter around the areas in case the Chinch are migrating into the fresh green grass.
You will find this insect only in the sunniest, hottest places in the lawn. The areas that have shade, they will avoid. They like being close to concrete as concrete radiates heat. The hotter it is, the more active they are. They sit atop the grass blades and suck the sap/water substance from the grass plant, killing it.
The healthier your lawn is, the less you’ll see of these critters. If your lawn is in distress from lack of water, you can bet you’ll see them move in.
To eradicate them, an additional spray will need to be performed one week after the first spray. Our Bifenythrin product kills Chinch bugs, but not the eggs. If you spray a week after the first spray, you can kill the hatchlings before they’re old enough to lay eggs.
Landscape plants
Keep an eye on your landscape plants, particularly any young trees you may have. It would be good to provide them with extra water during this time. A good routine to have is to saturate a tree’s rootball once a week, in addition to your regular watering.
When landscape plants go into distress, predator insects also pick up on that, like they do with turf. Aphids, Scale, Spider Mites are the culprits that attack our landscapes. Pay close attention to any Crape Myrtles you might have. Scale, which looks like a white crust substance but is actually an insect, attaches itself to the trunk of a Crape Myrtle and lives off the moisture/sap of the tree. You’ll find them up and down the trunk and limbs.
Both aphids and scale produce a sugary substance that they secrete onto the tree bark. This sugary substance draws in ants and other insects. It can also cause “black soot mold” which causes the bark to become blackened. Treat the insect issue with the same Bifenythrin product and use a liquid fungicide for the black soot mold.
If you have Hostas in your landscape beds and the leaves of those Hostas appear to have holes eaten into the leaves, you have a snail/slugg problem. Set out some snail bait and your Hostas will return to normal.
Fertilization/Pre-emergent
August is the month when we apply our third and final round of fertilizer for the season. We will also apply our second round of pre-emergent for the year. You can put both products down at the same time, they will not affect each other.
However, this year I’m going to encourage you to wait until the heat breaks before putting down the fertilizer. If that is the last week of the month or even in September, we need to wait until the 100s go away.
Fertilizer helps grass for sure, but not in this type of heat. Fertilizer causes grass/plants to require more water. So we definitely want to wait until the heat breaks or our grass will just burn up.
When you apply your fertilizer, water the lawn for two nights in a row to get the product dissolved into the soil.
Whatever your normal spreader setting is for your fertilizer product, go one notch below the recommended setting. We don’t need to put down as much fertilizer as usual with the last application. Applying a normal rate or heavier rate could cause some lawn fungus problems in September because nitrogen in fertilizer is like gas to fire as far as lawn fungus goes. We want a light ratio and get it into the soil so we don’t have to worry with fungus.
