When it comes to maintaining a lush, beautiful lawn in Michigan, summer care is critical. Our state’s warm summers offer an opportunity for your grass to grow green and strong, but they also raise a number of risks. Only by planning carefully and anticipating all your lawn’s needs can you respond to these risks and keep your turf healthy for the long haul.

Lush Lawn’s expert lawn care services have the resources and expertise to help you with all the most important aspects of summer lawn care, including:

Watering Lawns in Summer

Although Michigan is known for its wet climate, natural rainfall may not be enough to keep your lawn healthy. Particularly if you use the cool season variety of turf grass, it’s necessary to water regularly throughout the summer. In general, you should water your grass in the morning or early in the afternoon. This allows the water to seep into the soil without evaporation, and it prevents moisture from remaining in the yard at night, something that can make your lawn more likely to develop fungal diseases.

Cool turf grass requires a modest amount of water, usually between half an inch and one and a half inches per week. It’s important to stay within this range. Not only does watering your lawn less than that leave it with too little moisture to grow, but excessive watering also creates problems. If you water the grass too much, its roots do not have to grow as deep to get it.

This weakens the lawn in the long run and makes it more likely to succumb to future threats. To help regulate moisture throughout the summer, Lush Lawn offers the Water Maximizer application. Water Maximizer retains moisture, helps water reach your grassroots, and reduces the risks associated with summer heat on your lawn.

Fertilizing Your Lawn in Summer

In addition to modest watering, turf grass in Michigan often requires fertilization to make it through the summer strong. But you don’t want to begin fertilizing when your lawn is in a state of dormancy, as it does not actively grow at that time. For this reason, your lawn fertilizer service will usually wait until August or early September to begin fertilizing. Not only should your grass be growing in earnest at that time, but the high rates of rainfall and cool conditions make it easier for the fertilizer to spread and feed those plants.

Not all fertilizers are created equal, and for grass, you want to use a product with a 25 to 50 percent lower concentration of nitrogen than for other plants. This lets the fertilizer enter the soil at roughly the same rate as the grass grows. As a result, your grass has time to absorb all of the fertilizer, and you don’t have to worry about weeds, fungi, and other harmful plants growing off of the nutrients.

Summer Grub Control

Summer is the time when the outdoors come to life, and for gardening, that’s not always a good thing! Among that summertime, life is the grubs of Japanese beetles and European chafers, which begin laying their eggs toward the end of June. Once these grubs hatch, they will begin to consume the roots of your grass, depriving the turf of the ability to take in nutrients and grow.

Effective grub control is often just a matter of making sure your lawn has enough water and nourishment to resist them. If you water and fertilize the grass effectively, it should grow strong enough to resist a grub infestation. But if the grub problem grows out of control, you may need to use pesticides or other acute control measures. With the help of a professional, you can kill grubs on a large scale without harming your lawn or the surrounding environment.

Mowing in Summer

Summer mowing is critical, as grass that grows too lush will take up too many nutrients and become unsustainable. But cut your grass too short and you make it harder for it to retain moisture or absorb sunlight. Most types of grass should be mowed down to about 3 inches. Make sure to sharpen your mower blade on a regular basis, as a dull blade will tear the grass unevenly and make it vulnerable to disease. You should also leave grass clippings in the soil so that the nutrients can be reused.

For more information on how best to meet your lawn care goals, contact Lush Lawn for lawn care services.