Salt Damaged Lawn

skubaaruba

I have a lawn that was damaged by salt water as a result of Hurricane Irene. Flood waters covered my lawn and now it has turned brown much like it does in the winter time. Will the lawn come back or will it have to be replanted?

kmc

Depends on what you do about the salt as well as the type of grass you have. I assume you are east coast and have cool season turf? If so then it's dead and gone. If bermuda or similar then it could return. What you need to do is rid the salts. Get some sulfur and/or gypsum and spread it heavy on the area, and leach the area really hard. Irrigate until it puddles and wait for the puddling to drain and then repeat. If you have a sprinkler timer, then set it on as many start times as it allows per day at the amount of time to cause puddles on each cycle. Example: 6:00am- 10 minutes, 6:15am- 10 minutes, 6:30am- 10 minutes, 6:45am- 10 minutes. No sprinklers? Then use a sprinkler stand and a hose. It will take a few hours of water to pass the salts through. Nothing else can be done but leaching to rid salts (aside from shoveling it).

biggles

cut it low and let the rain soak it and it will come back next spring no problem i had 36" of water covering my lawn on the south shore of Long Island hit from Irene just low cut it today and its supose to rain for the next three days...might neak a bag of lime in there before mondays rain