Hot Weather Turning Most Local Lawns Brown

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- If your lawn is lacking some green, you are not alone.

In just about every neighborhood, you can find brown, crunchy grass.

It's certainly not pretty, and unfortunately, there's not much you can do to fix it besides watering.

"When you are watering, the important thing is to use the water wisely and the best way for the plants, which means go out there early in the morning; and you need to give that lawn one inch of water per week, and when we have no rain at all, maybe two inches per week," said Doug Oster, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's garden columnist.

But once you turn on the sprinkler, how can you tell how much water is actually hitting your yard?

"Put a little tuna can on the ground, and when that is filled up, you've got everything you need for the lawn," Oster says.

If you're thinking about spreading some type of product on the grass, don't waste your time. It won't do any good right now.

"At this point, it's too hot or dry to fertilize, so we just have to wait it out basically," Oster adds.

Wait it out and don't try anything strange, like paint your lawn green like one homeowner in Indianapolis.

You can be proactive for next year.

"One of the most important things you can do is when we get to the end of the season is to re-seed," said Oster. "Put some new seed on there when things cool off and we get some rain, and then that new grass next spring is going to go crazy for you."

In the meantime, don't stress and remember, it could always be worse.

Oster says, "1988 was probably twice as bad as this and that was a tough year for gardeners and for people growing their lawn. But you know what, grass is so tough that it came back in '88, [and] it will come back now."

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