Summer grass

1. Your lawn won’t care that it rained non-stop in June. Grass has a short memory. (Grass pun!)
2. If your grass is turning a weird dark green, it’s stressed and about to go dormant (like you, before your vacation…).
3. Unless you actually use your lawn a lot (which is rare), let this happen. It will revive come September. If there are sections that see a lot of traffic, water those morning and evening until they stabilize, and consider irrigation to save water (counter-intuitive but true).
4. Watch out for roundish yellow patches that seem to multiply. Summer pests (cinch bug, et al.) can devastate your lawn, and bringing it back will be expensive. Call a local lawn service such as Pro-Vert to deal with it promptly. Most of their treatments are organic.
5. Do not cut more than 1/3 of the growth at a time. Bushy grass is happy grass.

Summer flowers and shrubs

1. Now is the time if you need to prune shrubs that flowered in June (think lilacs, tall varieties of spirea, etc.). They flower next spring on this summer’s growth.
2. Deadhead your annuals often. Pinch back spent flowers frequently to ensure summer-long bloom.
3. Deadhead your perennials, including stems. The seeds of some late-flowering perennials are bird magnets (think grasses, echinops, rudbeckia…), but the early summer ones less so.
4. Plants hydrate best the same way you do – a good deep drink, before they get thirsty, will do wonders. Too much, too fast, will just zoom right out again.
5. Take pictures now, so you remember what you love and what needs changing.

And last but not least, sit back and enjoy!

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