I’m going to have to put in a new lawn this fall at the Crabtree Compound. My lawn died a few weeks ago due to the drought and heat. 103 + F today and 100+ forecasted for tomorrow. My lawn was yellow/brown weeks ago. At first I thought it was dormant but the prolonged and high temps seemed to have killed it. so I decided to try a little experiment. I made a 2 foot diameter hoop of Romex wire and laid it on the grass. Starting on July 9, I watered that circle twice a day with the equivalent of a half inch of rain with each watering. I watered it at 5:30 am and 5:00 pm (an inch of rain every day). I have been photographing the spot every day for 7 days and seven inches of water. The spot I picked has two small clover weeds that seemed to stay green but as of yet, there is zero change and zero green-up in the grass. In the photos, the only thing that makes the area within the circle look different is that the ground is darker though the grass from all the watering. An online search explained how the “Crown” at the base of the grass (if its still alive) can be revived with water to bring grass out of dormancy but if the crown is dead, so is your grass. Your only option at this point is to re-seed your grass in the fall and start over. Here are the pictures I took. You can see the clover is the only thing that survived. Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Roughly half of my lawn appears to be dead. There is no rain in the forecast, just more upper 90's and 100's and sunshine. Other ornamentals and trees have now begun to die as well. Here is a short video of the lawn. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeGnKRGXFic&feature=youtu.be
Yes, I would not consider that since I have a private well and would not risk it for the sake of grass. I would rather have water to take a shower and flush the toilet. I've got a big yard so 1,000's of gallons weekly would have had to have been used to keep the grass alive. I only hoped to establish if the grass was dead or not.
Well good luck re-seeding your lawn. I'm sure you will whittle some type of contraption out of one of your dead ornamentals to use as a seed thrower.
RC, I'm not sure that your lawn is dead quite yet. We had this same type of weather I think in '95, and the lawns seem to have made it thru that alright. All we can hope for is the best as far as any amount of rain. I tried planting some seed about 4 weeks ago where I had a pine tree removed....the initial seed in April came in pretty good, but any subsequent seeding has failed to sprout...I think the lawn is in a very advanced dormant state.
Thats why Ive been testing it to see if I can bring it back to life. 7 days and 7 inches of water and nothing has happened. After reading a lot about this sort of thing, it would appear its dead. I plan to continue watering this spot to see if it will come back.
Thus far in my life I have never had a need to seed a lawn and I doubt I will do much of it after this so in this case I will most likely just buy a broadcast spreader at Ace or just throw it by hand.
How on earth would having a complete failure from Kenya who seems to ruin everything he is involved in help my grass? Unless he wants to seed my lawn and then keep it watered (I would pay him), I’ve no interest in him interacting with my lawn. As a pot head, he might want to roll and smoke my lawn and the fire danger is way to high for that.
Well if you give him some busy work with your lawn, then maybe he'll forget he's the POTUS. It's a solid plan playing on his inability to multitask... By the way, if I saw my neighbor doing something like this, I would just move the wire every night after he goes to bed. Hopefully you don't have neighbors like me...
I landscape for a living and it is not 100% dead until it starts turning gray, by no means is your lawn healthy and it appears to be right on the edge of being dead. We are having the same problem here in Ohio, we can't mow people's lawns because the mower will kill the grass and no one wants to spend any money on construction work. It's tough.
If you don't want to spend a lot of money and have a lot of time, get one of these.... I just bought one to use on my food plots...er I mean bait plots. Great for spreading the smallest of seeds. It will handle big stuff also like skittles or corn. They look kind of cool and could be worn to a bar or a party. I'm sure it would be a big hit. Women prefer M & M's. Good luck.
I'd bet some pretty good money that If you get a good shot of rain your lawn will come too fairly well. Well water only does so much, nothing better then rain.
