Summertime in the Texas Hill Country is unforgiving. What worked for your yard in April won’t cut it when the heat index stays above 100° F for weeks at a time. That green grass will brown up. Beds will begin to crisp by noon. And it’s natural to want to just set your sprinklers and leave them running.
Except you can’t. Watering your way out of a Central Texas summer is no longer an option. Cities like Austin enforce year-round water conservation schedules, and surrounding cities like Dripping Springs implement harsh drought stages that dictate not only when you can run your sprinkler system, but how much water you can use. And Mother Nature does not care about your watering schedule. If you leave your sprinklers on all day to “correct” problems in your yard, you’ll pay a steep fine in most of our service area.
Your summer watering mindset has to change. Instead of trying to force your landscape to grow throughout the summer months, you have to teach it how to survive. It’s all about resilience. To that end, here are the fundamental ways we approach watering clients’ landscapes during summer. Follow these tips and you’ll protect your landscape investment and may even save water in the process.
1. Master the “One-Day” Watering Window
Sprinkler systems are restricted to one day a week for watering lawns in most municipalities. Let’s face it; that’s just the way it is now. So make it count. The difference between a lawn that makes it through August and one that crisps up will be how you manage that one day, not how much you violate it.
Water early or late. Set your timer cycles for the early morning hours of midnight through 10:00 AM or later in the evening after 7:00 PM. Daytime watering is the number one form of waste that we encounter. You can lose 30% of your water to evaporation before it hits the ground. Essentially, you are paying for water to increase the humidity instead of hydrating your lawn.
Use the screwdriver test. It’s the easiest test in horticulture and tells you more than an expensive soil moisture meter. Simply hammer a regular sized straight screwdriver into your lawn. If it goes six inches in easily, your soil is holding moisture, and your water is penetrating the ground. If it gets tough and the screwdriver won’t go in without digging into the ground with your other hand, then your soil is compacted and crusty. This means that when you water on that one day a week, the water is running off and not penetrating the soil. There are ways to alleviate compacted soil (core aeration is great), but you can’t fix it if you don’t know it’s a problem.
2. Raise Your Mower Blades (Give Your Grass Some Shade)
Practically every homeowner cuts their lawn shorter than they should in the summer months. Sometimes it’s because scalp cuts look neater. Sometimes it’s just to make those few extra days between cuttings last as long as possible. It just seems responsible. In Central Texas, scalp cutting is one of the quickest ways to cook your lawn, though.
Cutting your grass too short means exposing that brown dirt and shallow root structure to the beating heat of the afternoon sun. With no grass above to provide shade, those roots fry. And those brown patches you start to get aren’t from underwatering, it’s sunburn.
The solution is free. Simply adjust your mower blades up to their highest setting. For most St. Augustine or Zoysia grass types, that’s around 3-4″ tall. Taller grass blades create a literal shadow on the ground, keeping more moisture in and the root-zone significantly cooler. You’ll cut less often, it will stay green longer, and you’ll save water in the process. It’s one of the few lawn changes that’s easier AND better for summer.
3. Upgrade to “Hardwood” Mulch Armor
Mulch is like a space blanket for your plant beds. Applied properly, it moderates soil temperature, protects roots from the sun, and reduces evaporation by upwards of 50%. In a landscape where water is rationed, that’s not a finishing detail, that’s front-line armor.
The bad news is that not all mulch is built for these conditions. Avoid fluffy, inexpensive pine straw that simply washes out of your beds with the first gust of Hill Country wind. Resist-dyed mulches also whiten to a ghostly gray within days under our intense UV rays. They look great on the garden center shelf, but rarely hold up by July.
Our mulch of choice is a 2- to 3-inch layer of coarse, native double shredded hardwood. It weaves together to form a blanket that won’t blow away, decomposes slowly, and complements limestone and native plantings like none other. Pro tip: Be sure to pull mulch back a few inches from tree trunks and shrub bases. Mulch piled against the bark retains moisture where it won’t do any good and promotes rot. You want to protect the roots, not choke the trunk.
4. Shield Your High-End Stonework and Patios
Summer maintenance doesn’t just involve the living things in your yard. Summer heat and our expanding and contracting clay and limestone soils cause thermal expansion and contraction in stone patios, masonry joints, and retaining walls. These features are usually the biggest investments in your landscape and the easiest to neglect. They don’t roll over on their side and wilt like a plant. Instead, the stress builds up quietly out of sight.
A couple of habits go a long way:
- Wash off your stone often. Don’t allow acidic debris or leaf matter, especially splashed on pool chemicals from adjacent areas, to remain on flagstone or Lueders limestone patios. Allowing them to bake on the surface etches and pits it. That damage won’t buff out.
- Walk your wall. Give your limestone retaining walls a few extra inspections this summer. Take a close look at the mortar joints. Expansion caused by drastic heat, right before a sudden thunderstorm deluge, is what makes those micro-fractures occur. Nipped in the bud, they’re an easy fix.
Don’t Panic—Just Tweak the Plan
So you’ve seen some brown this month and had that adrenaline rush of panic. Take a breath. Chilling out in a beautiful yard shouldn’t become a source of stress once summer rolls around. The answer is also rarely “water more”. Preventive, smart maintenance like watering at the right time of day, raising your mower deck, mulching properly, and monitoring your hardscape helps you conserve while protecting your landscape.
Shawn and the Blazek Landscapes team design functional, upscale outdoor living spaces that are meant to handle exactly these stresses with minimal effort. By choosing the right hardscape, plants, and design ahead of time, you can avoid fighting Mother Nature all season long.
Does your yard feel like it struggles each summer? Maybe you’re just tired of fighting caliche and watering restrictions year after year? It’s time to talk about making your landscape more climate resilient. Contact Blazek Landscapes to set up an on-site consultation.
