Patches of brown grass can appear in any lawn at a moment's notice, and are one of the most common landscaping problems that homeowners can experience. There are a wide variety of factors that can cause grass to begin to die and turn brown, which can make fixing the problem slightly difficult. Thankfully, there are a handful of different things that you can do to try and restore the green lustre of your lawn and maintain the aesthetic appeal of your entire landscape that your landscape designer helped you create.
Adjust Watering Times
Consider when you're watering your lawn if you notice that your grass seems to be dying during the summer months. The best time to apply water to your grass is in the morning, before the sun is up, as this ensures that the water won't evaporate and the soil has time to absorb it. Further, you may want to take a look at your sprinkler and watering setup to ensure that water is reaching all edges of your yard: brown patches outside of the reach of your sprinkler can be easily fixed by adjusting the position of the sprinkler itself.
Stop Fertilizing
Putting too much fertilizer on your lawn can leave too many nutrients, especially salt, in the soil, which can have the opposite of the intended effect on your grass. If you notice that patches of brown grass show up a day or two after you apply fertilizer onto your lawn, you likely have put too much on in a short period. You can mitigate this by laying off the fertilizer for a few weeks and continuing to regularly water your lawn to dilute the built up minerals.
Remove Weeds
Though this may seem to be the most obvious step to take, removing weeds is essential to maintaining the health of your grass and other plants in your garden. Weeds will leech water and nutrients from entire sections of your lawn, leaving behind brown dead grass. The best way to remove weeds is by hand so that you can eliminate their root system as well, but you may want to also consider spraying a pre-emergent herbicide on your lawn, which will linger for a while and kill new weeds as they begin to bud.
Keep Animals Off
Finally, one of the most important things that you can do to maintain the appearance of your lawn is to keep your pets off of it. This is because animal urine has a specific pH value and certain minerals which can cause plants to die fairly quickly. Do your best to keep your pets off of your lawn, and consider putting up signs asking your neighbors to do the same in order to maintain the health of your grass.
Share27 July 2017
About a year ago, I realized that part of the reason the plants in my yard kept dying was the fact that they were planted in the wrong places. I didn't pay much attention to which plants needed certain amounts of light, and it was costing them their lives. Several of the plants were really struggling to live, and it was really hard to see. I realized that if I ever wanted to make things right, I would need to create a landscaping plan that would work well for the natural landscape of my yard. This blog is all about understanding landscaping.