Lawns yellow throughout neighborhoods

By R. LEWIS

A drive through our neighborhoods in the lower Laguna Madre shows that the lawns are turning yellow due to the intensely hot & dry temperatures of June.  Now entering the month of July, I am starting to see the percentage of rain go up from 5% to 30% for the coming week, but when you walk outside of your house into the extreme heat, you start realizing that it is more like a 70% chance it will NOT rain anytime soon.

At work, we have been planting some large palm trees at a couple of new houses and were surprised that after we dug down about one-foot into the soil with picks, rock bars and shovels, the soil softened and actually had plentiful moisture leftover from the spring rains. The digging from the one-foot to four-foot range was much easier.  This being early July, with the non-stop dry-heat winds, will continue to dry the soils out rapidly.  Hopefully, we will be part of the 30% area that gets some showers.  It’s time we start doing those rain dances.

With just some soil moisture left in the ground, our trees are nearing the point of “leaf drop”, so unless we supplement some of that soil moisture with irrigation, more leaf drop from trees will be the result.  Over the past two weeks we have planted eight large palm trees with root balls averaging from 40 inches x 36 inches.  The summer months are an excellent time to plant these as long as you keep them watered properly.  Newly planted trees this size cannot survive this heat if water down to bottom of the root ball is not provided.  We have to insert the water hose into the hole to get moisture all the way down and then these big palms will flourish.  Drip irrigation works well to maintain the deep moisture needed by the large trees, but sprinkler systems just don’t do the job.  In this heat, standing there with the hose watering helps keep your newly planted trees alive, but the trees need to get that deep soaking to grow and thrive.

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