Special care will get lawn through hotter weather

When the hot weather shows up, our lawns need some special care to get them through the worst of the heat and recover quickly. Here are a few easy tips to help your lawn:

Increase watering time 50 to 100 percent.

Water your lawn just before or just after you mow in order to maintain resiliency in the grass blades, so that they will stand erect, thereby avoiding sunburned mower tracks.

Make sure your mower blades are sharp. Dull blades shred the grass, which seems to show up more readily as a dull singe during hot weather.

Trim back overgrown shrubs and droopy tree limbs that may be blocking sprinkler spray.

Make a taller grass cut. Raise mower height to about 3 inches for bluegrass/fescue lawns so that your grass will shade itself and prolong moisture in the soil.

In difficult areas where your turf seems to struggle to stay green in the heat such as slopes or areas near hot pavement, consider a second watering between noon and about 4 p.m. Your lawn will love such a cool treat on a blazing afternoon.

Keep your eyes peeled for random shaped, burnt looking areas of grass with a brownish cast that start small and slowly increase in size. They are found usually in moist or overwatered areas of the lawn. The dead grass will lift right off the soil surface. This indicates the presence of grubs that chew off the grass at its base. These insect larvae show up this time of year and can be easily controlled by products from your neighborhood nursery.

In this heat, shade is great but not on a lawn all the time. Ironically too much shade over a lawn will eventually cause it to deteriorate. Many of us have witnessed this situation in the forests where no grass can grow under the dense canopy of trees. Therefore, in our own yards we must correctly prune large trees or groups of trees that are too thick to allow the sun to filter through.

Many of us are still buying potted plants and shallow flats for color in the fall garden. Too many of us unknowingly are setting the containers out on hot walkways and other hot paved surfaces. What’s happening? We’re baking the root systems! Find a cool spot for your new purchase right away. Better yet get them in the ground now.

Plan your yard for drought tolerance. If some sections of your yard are not conducive to great amounts of care or water, have fun creating an area of drought tolerant plants. Your favorite neighborhood nursery can guide on choices of suitable plants or check with the WSU/Spokane County Plant Clinic at 222 N. Havana St., 477-2048.

This week in the garden

Hold off watering tomatoes a bit. When they get too much water this time of year, they tend to split.

Fall color plants are showing up in the nurseries. Mums, flowering cabbage and kale, and other plants put in now will have enough time to settle in and give us a show until the first hard frosts or later.

Continue feeding annuals in the garden and pots so they have food as they recover from the hot weather.

If you have thought about putting in ornamental grasses, now is a great time to look for them in landscapes around town and observe their sizes, colors and shapes. There are some good examples at the Ferris Perennial Gardens at Manito Park. They even have labels so you can tell what they are.

Shear back lavender as it finishes blooming. Cut only into the top inch or so of the green leaves and not into the woody part of the plant. The plant can’t generate new growth from brown stems.

Deadhead late summer perennials, especially those that are prone to sending seeds everywhere. You will thank yourself next year.

Refresh mulches in vegetable gardens and flower beds. As the weather cools, the weeds will take off again. The weeds that grow this time of year are usually ones that will take off early in the spring too. Think chickweed.