Lawn Watering
With the weather heating up, grass is going to struggle to stay green. Make the choice to either commit to watering and keeping it green or letting it go dormant and brown. If you let your grass go dormant and then decide to water it, you could be harming your lawn. Breaking dormancy cycles costs the grass a lot of food and energy reserves, and makes it more susceptible to disease. If you commit to watering and keeping up with it, you can let your lawn go into a mild drought. If you walk on your lawn and you can see the footprints left behind, that is a sign of mild drought. This is beneficial to the grass because it stimulates root growth.
Ground Cover Plants
Ground cover is plants that fill in an area of your landscaping. These can be good in certain areas where you would like low maintenance after the plants are established. There are a variety of ground covers that can be planted in areas ranging from mostly shaded to mostly sunny. Sweet Woodruff, Hellebore, Ivy, Lily of the Valley, Pachysandra, European Ginger, Ajuga, Vinca, Sedum, and Isotoma are some different groundcovers that can be used in the Midwest area. Ground cover is useful for shaded areas under trees where you don’t want to have to do a lot of maintenance, or areas with a slight slope that would be difficult to mow, or to fill in beds around large shrubs.