We have been out on a number of calls recently and had many more of you coming in and asking what in the world is wrong with your lawn? Well what has happened is your winter lawn stayed alive too long! Yes too long. When cool season grasses don’t “transition” early enough in the spring or summer, they don’t allow the dormant summer lawn to come out of dormancy and after a certain period the warm season grass dies off. Then when we get really hot, especially at night the ryegrass finally dies off revealing that there is nothing but dirt left! So what to do? Be sure you fertilize adequately, remove dead ryegrass thatch, water sufficiently perhaps even hand watering the affected spots extra. If the areas are not too big the remaining grass should fill in and you might get some regrowth from the root system. If the areas are very large you may need to resod or reseed depending on what type of bermudagrass you have.
The real solution is to be sure next spring we “force” the ryegrass to die off more quickly-we’ll discuss that then!
About Jay Harper
