Remember all that cold weather and rain from the spring?
Well, the summer solstice has come and gone, it hasn’t rained for nearly two weeks, the temperatures hit the hit 90s last week…and your lawn may be suffering, and that soon.
Watering will help, but not because your grass actually needs the water. Given the amount of rain this spring, there’s probably enough ground water available to sustain grass for at least a month. Where daytime watering helps is to drop the temperature of your lawn through evaporative cooling.
Turf grass always looks better when cut with a sharp mower blade.
But what really helps – and is ALWAYS overlooked – is the condition of your mower blades. Frankly, you don’t need to mow as much in July and August, but when you do you need those blades to be as sharp as they can possibly be.
Why? Because sharp blades make a clean cut across the top of your grass plants. A dull blade makes a jagged ‘tear’, thereby leaving plants more susceptible to disease – mold and fungus from overnight dew – and weeds. Think of it in terms of a clean cut on your arm with a blade, compared to a jagged wound with broken glass. It’s all the same.
There are stats that show that a sharp mower blade helps significantly to keep lawns looking better, healthier, and hardy to the stress of summer. Sharp blades also help by saving stress on your mower’s engine, and, you get better gas efficiency.
It’s usually last thing people do for their lawns, because a good sharpening for a mower can cost as much as $30. But like changing the oil in hour car’s engine, it may save you so much down the road.
