Here we are in the middle of another scorching-hot summer. People suffer. Animals suffer. But we sometimes forget that plants can suffer too. In fact, plants can suffer so much that it might take a long time to recover and get back to looking normal.
And that includes your lawn grass.
But I’ve noticed that in drought-stricken areas, advice is often given to let lawns go brown. Just stop watering and let the grass go dormant.
That might be good advice for homeowners facing watering restrictions. After all, if you can’t get enough water, you don’t really have much choice. But it’s not good advice for everyone.
Dormant Looks Dead. And Dead Looks Dormant.
It’s true that lawn grass will go dormant when it’s experiencing a crisis-level water shortage.
And though dormant grass looks brown and dead, the roots are still alive. According to experts, grass that has gone dormant due to insufficient watering will “usually” recover once water again becomes available.
But that “usually” part is a bit worrisome.
Because here’s the thing: It’s really hard to tell the difference between DEAD grass and DORMANT grass. They both look the same. They look BAD!
So if you’re lax with your watering schedule, and your grass goes brown – either in whole, or in spotty patches – it’s not a good thing. Your grass is severely stressed. It has gone into dormancy in a last-ditch effort to survive.
It may recover completely. And it might not.
Technology to the Rescue
In some areas, lawns suffer from water shortages because of watering restrictions. In other areas, lawns suffer just simply from homeowner negligence. That can happen when a homeowner just isn’t aware of how much water is needed to survive the blistering summertime heat. Or they’re just not paying attention.
In either case, the result can be brown lawns – hopefully dormant, but possibly dead. And in most cases, it’s absolutely unnecessary.
Because even if you happen to live in an area that must deal with water restrictions, in all but the very most severe situations, you should be able to provide your lawn with enough water to keep it healthy.
That’s because we have a tool that simply didn’t exist until very recently. It’s called a smart irrigation controller.
The best example of a smart controller is the Hydrawise controller. It can maintain a healthy lawn and slash water usage in half. And smart controllers assure that lawns remain healthy during all weather extremes by taking forgetful, neglectful, sometimes even ignorant humans out of the watering equation.
You can turn over all of your lawn watering decisions to your smart controller. It decides when to water and how much to water. And it’s constantly weighing all of the variables that make those decisions so difficult – wind, temperature, humidity, forecast, and so on.
Turning over your water management to a smart controller is a much ‘smarter’ choice than letting your lawn go brown. Because whether by neglect or by choice, a lawn that has gone brown is a lawn that has become an eyesore.
And whether that lawn will recover? Only time will tell!