With the mixture of heavy rain, excessive heat, and summer pests at play, keeping a Gray garden healthy in July and August is a challenge. Flowers can get waterlogged and diseased, lawns often develop dry brown or vivid green patches, and overall landscape maintenance becomes a bigger task than homeowners anticipated. To help your landscape thrive this summer, follow these simple lawn care practices.
Water Appropriately
Although Georgia homeowners often worry about drought, overwatering is a bigger risk in the summer. Don’t simply schedule the sprinklers every morning. To practice better watering techniques, remember to:
- Monitor rainfall and adapt your sprinkler schedule.
- Watch your yard after a storm; if water pools in one area, install a runoff trench or storm drain.
- Grab a handful of soil. If the soil is damp and malleable, it’s sufficiently watered. If moisture leaks onto your hand, your lawn is overwatered.
- Irrigate your lawn for more efficient watering.
Aerate Your Lawn
When you lay fresh sod, you must first remove old grass, till the lawn, and aerate your yard. Keeping grass healthy is less time consuming, but it follows similar principles. If appropriate watering, mowing, and fertilization of your grass isn’t keeping the turf healthy, dethatch and aerate your lawn. This allows oxygen and nutrients to penetrate the soil and reach the roots of an otherwise starved lawn.
Mulch Your Garden
Mulch provides a variety of benefits to a Southern garden: it provides a barrier between the sun and the roots, it disperses and conserves moisture, and it traps nutrients where they’re needed most. Mulch around flowerbeds, beneath trees, and around areas where the grass meets shrubs. Choose pine straw or wood chips based on your family’s preferred aesthetic.
For summer landscaping tips, supplies, and professional insights, stop by the Ace of Gray garden center.
