Originally Posted by
paulster2626
The solution for 90% of lawn issues is water and keeping the grass longer. I cut mine on the 2nd highest setting. When it gets hot and never rains like this summer, the grass goes dormant. It's not dead, it's just a defense mechanism allowing it to survive. As soon as the cool weather and rains come back in late summer/fall, it'll spring back to life. So up to you if you want to spend the $ on keeping it green or not.
My problem with having a dormant lawn is that crabgrass will start to creep in from the driveway/curbs, and I need to dig it all out to keep it from fully taking over. If I keep my grass long and green, then nothing else has a chance to even get started.
HOT TIP: when you do start to water it or it rains again/whatever, there will be some spots where the grass just doesn't seem to want to come back to life. I bet the problem is for some reason the soil has become hydrophobic, and water is just running off the surface to the area around it (which will get green, quick). Solution is to put some baby shampoo in a sprayer and soak the spot with it. It'll get nice and bubbly. Then go back to just straight water and rinse it all away. Take a soil sample (with an aerator or just test with a screwdriver even) and you'll see that now water is getting down to the roots and in a few days it'll look much better. Worst case you are just adding more water to your grass, so it can't hurt.