Tips to keep the summer heat from wreaking havoc on your lawn
MINNEAPOLIS — If not properly managed, the summer heat can wreak havoc on our lawns and landscaping.
Trisha and Jeremy Power work hard to take care of their yard in Minneapolis.
"I love it," Jeremy Power said. "Honestly, I love it when my buddies tell me how awesome our grass looks."
They don't use chemicals or fertilizers. They say the secret to their success is the soil.
"It's all compost," Trisha Power said. "Everything we clip I reuse, everything I dig out. This is all healthy, just mulch it up, toss it back on."
Rain this spring has given soil good and needed moisture to allow trees to cool themselves off in high heat.
Tyler Hesseltine, an arborist with the Davey Tree Expert Company, says to beware of overwatering.
"Then you can start to have root rot which will actually not allow trees to take up water the way it normally would," he said.
Too little water though can cause symptoms of heat stress like reddened or drooping leaves.
Hesseltine says ideally, a yard will get an inch of water per week, whether from rain, watering, or some combination of both.
"As it gets hot, the demands for water will increase," he said.
The lawn has its own considerations.
Hesseltine says blades of grass should be about three inches long.
To measure it, his trick is to lay a cell phone on its side, and if the grass is the same height or just taller, then it's the right length.