Drought conditions can stress your lawn more than almost any other kind of weather. Stress can make the grass more prone to harm from insects, invasive weeds and general poor health. This is why you need to carefully fight against drought conditions even if you can’t do anything to change the weather. The following essential techniques and tips will help you carry your lovely green carpet of grass through the dry times and back into lush vibrancy.

Preventing Drought Harm Before It Happens

Even before your lawn falls victim to a period of drought, you can apply preventative measures that make a difference later. 

The first of these is simply choosing a healthy grass species that’s particularly drought-resistant. Specialist grass suppliers often sell deep-rooted grass variants that thrive better during dry spells. If you’re seeding a new lawn or reseeding new shoots in your old grass, choose these species for better resilience. Even combined with weaker grass species, the presence of these hardy shoots helps preserve lawn moisture content for the whole lawn.

Secondly, while the weather is humid or moist, keep your lawn well cared for, fertilized, aerated and boosted by occasional deep watering. Combining all of these measures encourages robust health and helps preserve moisture in the roots and soil.

Lawn Care During a Drought

When dry weather has arrived, there are several things you can do to help your turf overcome the arid spell. These are the essential elements of lawn protection during a drought:

Avoid Lawn and Garden Projects

Anything that reduces overall soil moisture content and stresses your lawn is a bad idea when it’s dry. This includes lawn projects that involve digging of any kind. Opening the soil, either with major digs, trenches or aeration holes makes your lawn soil dry out much faster. Tramping on the grass and flattening it during garden work also makes things worse.

Stop Mowing

Tall grass traps moisture by keeping the soil below shadier. This is a good thing during a drought. Even if it leaves your grass looking a bit shaggy for a few weeks, don’t mow it when the heat ratchets up. Let the long shoots take care of themselves as much as possible.

Water Infrequently but Deeply

Local bylaws might actively prohibit using too much water during drought conditions. If this is the case, whenever the rules allow it, give your lawn a deep, robust watering that helps the soil retain maximum dry-period moisture content. Early morning hours between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m., right before or shortly after sunrise, are ideal for this.

Post-Drought Care

Once wet weather comes back, take advantage of the pre-winter months to repair and help your lawn recover before winter sets in. You can do this by giving the grass an aeration treatment, applying a healthy dose of fertilizer over the aerated grass and then watering deeply a few days after that.

When the leaves start falling from trees and pumpkins begin popping up in the stores, it's time to begin thinking about the winter needs of your lawns. We're going to cover what to do to prepare for the season ahead. The following tips and advice are the essentials for timing your year-end pre-winter lawn preparation just right.

When Does Winter Affect Lawn Growth?

Grass doesn’t automatically go dormant and stop growing during the winter months. If you live in a part of the country where temperatures stay reasonably warm all year round, you can enjoy a green lawn during all 12 months. However, if your area gets consistent winter temperatures of below 55 degrees Fahrenheit for a prolonged period of weeks or months, your grass will go dormant for a while.

This dormancy doesn't kill your grass and is a biological protective measure that helps your lawn survive winter months. Nonetheless, there are things you can do to help the grass along.

What Length Should You Cut the Lawn Before Winter?

You should cut your lawn down to a healthy winter length shortly before real winter cold begins. Doing so helps the lawn avoid winter mold growth, while also making spring management easier. The tricky part of cutting your lawn for the last time in the year is in deciding on how short to cut it.

You want the grass to be trimmed down enough to avoid potential mold, but cutting it too short can induce cold shock in the grass and cause parts of it to die off. Aim for a uniform trimming down to a height of about 2 inches.

When Should You Mow the Lawn for the Last Time?

There’s a bit of leeway for when to mow your lawn before winter sets in, and part of this depends on your regional winter onset time. Keep a few basic but crucial rules in mind:

Temperature

Once temperatures consistently start to drop below 55 degrees, you should mow warm weather grasses such as zoysia, St. Augustine, bahia or centipede grass down to 2 inches. For cold-weather grasses, you should perform your last trim of the year as soon as temperatures regularly dip to 45 degrees or lower.

Frost

You should never cut your lawn if it’s covered in frost. This can badly shock it and cause long-term harm. However, once you’ve noticed persistent winter temperatures of below 45 to 55 degrees, the first time when there’s no frost in the morning is your ideal day for a final cutting.

Regrowth

On a final note, if you cut your grass just a bit too early because the weather went through an early cold snap, you should mow your lawn once more as soon as you see that genuinely persistent cold has arrived. This usually happens in late October or November for much of temperate North America.