Dry June and July impacting local landscapers

Compared to past summers, this June and July have been relatively uneventful for landscapers across central Kentucky.

“A big part of what we do is we mow residential lawns, said Dave Miller, owner of Epic Lawn Care. “We have about 800 residential clients we mow in Lexington. When it doesn’t rain, we don’t mow. Or we don’t mow as much.”

After a mostly dry June and July, trees are turning orange and brown from the heat. The extended dry spell also causes flowers to close up while the grass stops growing.

“Most years, I would say it’s typical to get like two to three weeks where you’re mowing like 50%. That was kind of the normal,” Miller said. “It feels like we’re getting these extended dry periods longer and longer. Especially with all the 90-degree weather, it just fries up really quick.”

Instead of the normal two to three weeks, the stretch lasted nearly five straight weeks, during which Miller’s crews mowed only 42.5% of what they would normally do. With the lack of residential mowing, Epic Lawn Care found another way to keep busy.

“Luckily we kind of had a couple other divisions that keep us moving,” shared Miller. “Like we have our fertilization and weed control. So we are doing our summer fertilizer right now, which does help lawns back quicker. Still, where we mow a lot of residential yards, that’s still kind of a big blow.”

A flurry of rain showers has allowed business to pick back up over the past few days. But this lengthy dry season has still had some lingering effects.

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“If we don’t mow, then we don’t charge the customer for that,” Miller said. “So then yeah, we take kind of a beating on our end because we’re not producing as much revenue.”

While every mowing season has a dry period at some point in the year, Miller felt the dry summer season deviated from its normal pattern.

“The dryness has definitely hit earlier this year,” said Miller. “Like typically the last couple of years it’s been more second half of August going into fall and we’ve had bigger storms in July and this year, they just kind of missed us, at least in the Lexington area.”

According to drought.gov, it’s not just the Lexington area. In the last 30 days, eastern Kentucky has experienced abnormally dry conditions. In central Kentucky – including half of Fayette and Jessamine Counties – the conditions show signs of moderate drought.

With rain falling in the area nearly every day this week, however, the dry conditions have improved.