Is your lawn dying or dormant?

DAYTON, Ohio ( WDTN ) — Areas have not seen rain in weeks, lawns are drying out, and one community is asking residents to reduce water use.

Bellbrook is asking residents to reduce the amount of water they are using on non-essential activities like watering lawns, recreational use, or washing the car multiple times as the water table is at its lowest point since 2007.

The city is taking this approach to be proactive, since rain is not in the forecast over the next week.

“As adjustments through the season come about, there’s one thing we can’t control. We can’t control the amount of water flowing into the ground right now. So we want to properly manage what it is that we know we have access to. But no, we are not in danger of running out of water. All of our wells are pumping water,” said Rob Schommer, Bellbrook city manager.

Most lawns in the Dayton area are yellow or brown as it goes dormant, a tactic grass uses to survive drought conditions, but it can’t survive forever.

“After 3 to 4 weeks with no rainfall, no do know anything, that lawn is at risk of dying,” said Rodney Creech, owner of Lawn Plus LLC.

Most of the time we’re not going to know if that lawn recovers until we get rain.”

When we do get rain, grass should recover, if not it is dead.

“If you are going to reseed your lawn. What we typically recommend as a lawn care company is, you know, if you’re going to spend the money, you might as well kill the entire lawn and start over and have a brand new lawn. Some people decide that they just want to, you know, seed their lawn existing and keep the old grass,” said Creech.

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