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Neighborhoods all around the island are drying up fast. We have endured a month or more of this dry, hot weather, so here are some tips to help your lawn get through this difficult dry spell.

The temperatures have been summer hot and very dry with little humidity. The grass has been turning to a golden brown without the supplemental irrigation from your sprinkler system. The brown spots indicate a lack of proper coverage.

The first thing you should do is run the sprinklers manually and visually check for proper coverage. Clear any heads which are clogged and adjust any that are misaligned or not rotating properly. Check for shrubs and trees which may be blocking the water and trim them as necessary.

Unfortunately, this may not be completely effective. If you have done this and the coverage looks fine when checked during the day yet you still have areas which are obviously not getting adequate water it could be low water pressure during the hours when the system is running.

If you have an old turret valve system, rather than individual-valves for each zone, these can have problems with dirt accumulation and the diaphragm does not cycle through the zones properly when the pressure is not optimum. This means parts of your yard are getting all the water while the rest gets none.

Our pressure can drop when everyone is watering due to the drought conditions. Another problem is the water company has been doing repairs on one of the plants and so water pressure has been especially low due to these repairs.

The worst thing you can do is run your sprinklers for more days trying to green up the brown spots. The spots are still not getting coverage and the rest of your lawn is getting too much water. This will also exacerbate our water pressure problems as people are creating too great a demand on the utility. Not to mention needlessly draining our water reserves and bringing us closer to salt water intrusion into our water supply.

Watering during the midday hours is another water waster. While the pressure is likely to be better you will lose over half of the water to evaporation into the atmosphere due to heat and wind. Do try to change to a different time within the allowed hours. Find a time when the pressure on your street is a little better.

So what else should you do? Water the dry spots with a hose whenever you can find the time, preferably in the morning hours to help prevent disease problems. Remember the rules say you have to be at the end of that hose personally watering. These stressed areas are more susceptible to disease problems and insect infestation.

For disease prevention apply a fungicide like Daconil to the spots and a foot or two beyond the edges. As for insects keep a close eye on your lawn when the rains do begin for chinch bugs. A very hot, dry period followed by rain creates a climatic period that is perfect for the breeding of a generation of chinch bugs. They like to lay their eggs when it’s dry and then they hatch with the rains. Watch for the tell tale yellowing at the edges of the damaged areas in your lawn followed by the increase in size of your brown spots or new areas.

Part the blades to find the little black bugs with the white wings running in the soil or on the base of the grass blades. The newly hatched are tiny orange specks. Another problem likely to arise with these spots is an inability of the soil to absorb water. The soil has been adversely affected from being dry for so long. The grains of sand in our sandy soil tend to accumulate oil around them. This prevents water from penetrating the soil and so it just runs off these areas rather than being absorbed and used by the grass roots.

Applying a surfactant to the dry spots will help them more readily absorb water and thus enable them to green up again. A good surfactant which most of us already have around the house is liquid dish detergent. Or you can buy a surfactant in the garden center. Mix one tablespoon of dish soap to one gallon of water and drench these dry spots.

And finally, the most important way to help your lawn survive drought is to prepare it by watering deep and less often all year. You should never have to water more than twice a week once your lawn has been conditioned. Also cutting the grass at a higher depth will grow a deeper root system which will help the lawn to sail through times of drought with little or no damage when your sprinkler coverage is inadequate.

With all the work our new city is doing around the island I hope a new water system infrastructure is considered along with the new sewer system. We have been enduring damage to our lawns on a yearly basis for too many years now. Most people react to this drop in pressure and the brown spots by telling their lawn companies to increase the time and number of days to water. If you look at your lawn where it is getting coverage it’s usually dark green and lush with new growth.

As I stated earlier, watering more will not green up those brown spots but will only water the green spots more, cause more pressure problems and waste water. Also, the brown spots will become the breeding ground for problems which need chemicals to correct. And we all know where our chemicals and fertilizers end up. In the Gulf of Mexico.

This difficult period should end soon as we have entered into the cooler months of fall and winter. The trans-evaporation rate will drop significantly and the lawns will do well with much less water. Hopefully, we will begin to see some more rain soon. A nice tropical system, minus the wind, would be great right about now.

December is a great month to replace damaged sod as the need for supplemental irrigation is greatly reduced and plants tend to grow roots rather than excessive top growth when it’s cooler.

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Eileen Ward and her husband, Peter, own and operate Greensward of Marco Inc., a lawn maintenance and landscaping company. Besides completing horticultural courses from the University of Florida, she has a commercial maintenance spray license and is a registered dealer in agricultural products in Florida. To reach Ward, call 394-1413.