Your lawn or lawn has burned out and is completely dry after the drought and heat wave? What to do with advice from Roland Motte, our gardener.
After the drought and heat wave of this summer 2022, your lawn is all white and all dry. It’s very impressive, it looks like she’s dead and nothing will grow back. All the spring seedlings have disappeared, we can see the earth and everything is absolutely white.
Grass mixtures are made from grass seeds and mainly Regras. Regras is a very solid plant, but when it is too hot, the aerial parts of the plant disappear and dry up but the roots remain alive, and all it takes is a little rain for it to grow back.
The undesirables, the most resistant!
Some gardeners struggle to eliminate unwanted weeds in the lawn to keep only the grasses. But it can be a bad thing, especially in times of drought. These undesirable grasses, also called weeds, are the ones that will stay green.
Quackgrass has big leaves, it’s a grass, but not very pretty. And yet it is drought resistant and stays green. Yarrow is also undesirable, but it can also be found as a decorative or ornamental plant. We see these white flowers and these very jagged leaves spread out in the grass, and they remain green. We don’t like the bindweed that comes to bother us in the beds and the vegetable patch, but in the lawn it is quite at ease. Its roots are so big that they will draw water from deep. The clover which also spreads out, you don’t need to mow it often and it stays green!
– Roland Motte
Anticipate the hot weather for the lawn
With all those weeds, it’s not really a lawn anymore, more like a lawn. But at least there’s some greenery left. For the following year, anticipate. If it is hot, it is useless to mow even if the lawn is a little high, the more leaves there are, the greener they will remain. And with the arrival of the autumn rains, you will see that your lawn will turn green again.
Once the rains have fallen, you can start plugging the holes by sowing again. You have to refill, scarify, water, mow,… and whatever the weather, your lawn will continue to grow!
A beautiful lawn is hard work!
Find Roland Motte on France Bleu Lorraine and France Bleu Besançon and on his website www.guideconsojardin.com. You can also follow @rolandmotte on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.