Here's what's happening right now:

• Warm season grasses are thriving! These heat loving lawns are soaking in long hours of beautiful, summer sunshine and living their best lives. Be sure to keep them mowed to maximize their potential!

• Fescue lawns are struggling. Heat, drought & disease have these poor cool weather grasses hanging on for dear life! Happily, relief is in sight: Fall seeding is just around the corner. Please be patient with your Fescue lawn over the summer, it is trying its best. Be sure to repair it with fall seeding!

• Weeds may still be lingering and can be difficult to treat due to the high temperatures. However, that doesn't mean that we want you to live with them so please call us if you're seeing weeds. 

• Disease and harmful insects are omnipresent in untreated turf and shrubbery. If Dreamlawns isn't handling these issues for you, please contact us for DIY options. 

• Mosquitoes are continuing their aerial assault and spreading misery and disease throughout Hampton Roads. Fortunately our Outdoor Pest Control team is fighting back and forcing this bloodsucking menace into full retreat.                                          

Here is what it takes to guarantee a successful sprout:

• The 14-to-21-Day Rule: Once seed is down, it must be kept constantly damp for 14 to 21 days to germinate. If the seed is allowed to dry out even once after the germination process begins, the fragile embryo will die.

• The #1 Cause of Failure: Aside from visual issues like washouts from heavy storms, seed drying out is the only likely cause of poor germination. If the grass doesn't come up, it almost always comes down to moisture consistency.

• The Irrigation Blindspot: Automatic irrigation systems are great, but they rarely provide perfect, uniform coverage. Wind drift, clogged nozzles, or poor spacing leave dry zones. You must audit your system and manually check for underperforming, dry areas.

• The Aerator Hole Red Flag: If you notice grass seed sprouting only inside the core aeration holes and completely bare on the flat surface between them, this is a classic red flag of poor watering coverage. The holes hold moisture naturally, while the flat surface dried out and failed.

• Prompt Notice Matters: Dreamlawns stands behind our work and will gladly spot-seed underperforming areas at no cost to you, but we need you to notify us promptly. If you wait until December to call us for a reseed, we will absolutely honor our promise and put seed down, but the dropping winter soil temperatures mean the results will probably be poor.

Teamwork Makes the Lawn: We provide the premium seed and the perfect soil contact; you provide the water. Let's work together to make this fall a massive success!

Your irrigation system is a supplement not a substitute for natural rainfall. 

The Limits of Irrigation vs. The Power of Rain

• Imperfect Coverage vs. Total Saturation: No irrigation system achieves perfect distribution uniformity. Factors like wind drift, fluctuating water pressure, and nozzle spacing inevitably create dry patches and over-saturated zones. Rain blankets the entire landscape evenly, ensuring every square inch of soil and canopy is hydrated.

• The Cloud Cover "Reset": Rain is accompanied by clouds that drop ambient temperatures and slash intense solar radiation. This sudden reduction in heat stress and evaporation allows plants to conserve energy, restore their water balance, and "prime" their cellular machinery to absorb sunlight at maximum efficiency the moment the skies clear.

• Superior Water Chemistry: Municipal and well water often contain treatment chemicals (like chlorine), fluorides, or dissolved salts that can build up in the soil and stress root systems over time. Rainwater is pure, naturally soft, and contains high levels of dissolved oxygen, which prevents root rot.

• Free Atmospheric Fertilizer: Nature builds a fertilizer boost right into the weather. Lightning strikes break apart atmospheric nitrogen, which attaches to falling raindrops as highly bioavailable nitrates. This delivers an immediate, natural growth surge that a garden hose just can't replicate.

These turf damaging caterpillars can quickly wreak havoc on a lawn: Severe infestations can wipe out a lawn in a matter of hours. Once damage is observed it is often too late to prevent significant loss, so it's best to prevent infestation in the first place. While they are more common in very late summer or early to mid fall, in the last few years outbreaks have started in early summer or even late spring. 

• Our Turf Damaging Insect & Disease Control Plan is highly effective at killing fall armyworms before they cause major damage. 

• Customers without this service, should call asap if they see fall armyworm caterpillars or any fast moving damage on the lawn. We'll be out to check promptly, but it can take a couple of days so be prepared to apply a granular lawn insecticide (available at most hardware box stores) to halt damage. 

Core aeration potentially has an enormous benefit on root growth (and therefore on drought stress) depending on the level of soil compaction present.  

Core aeration has numerous other benefits:

• Improves water uptake by soil, which can further reduce drought stress and may improve drainage. This process can take several years.

• Allows air and sunlight to reach the root zone, which improves the plant’s ability to “breathe” and can help to stunt pathogenic bacteria.

• Allows nutrients to reach the root zone, especially when combined with compost fertilizers.

• Deposits soil on top of the ground, greatly increasing seed to soil contact for seeded fescue lawns in fall. 

• Reduces thatch, which also improves seed to soil contact.

• For best results, aerate every year. Fescue lawns should be aerated in fall (when they're seeded) and warm season lawns should be aerated in spring. 

• A unique package of nutrients and root stimulants applied directly to the root zone of large plants.

• Allows the plant to absorb more nutrients from the soil. 

• Helps to improve the drainage of the soil around your plants by reducing compaction and increasing aeration.

• Helps to increase disease resistance and encourages growth.