THE NW AUSTIN YARD | ISSUE 3 | JULY 2026
THE SOD FATHER
It’s July, soil temps are running 85 to 95 degrees, and your lawn has officially shifted into survival mode. Bermuda may go semi-dormant if it gets dry enough. That’s not death, by the way. It’s a defense mechanism, and it works.
Here’s the wrinkle this year: Austin is in Conservation Stage water restrictions, which means automatic sprinkler systems run one day per week, on your assigned day, before 10 a.m. or after 7 p.m. That’s it. So the old advice of “water three times a week in a drought” doesn’t apply. You can’t. The question becomes how to get the most out of the one day you have.
The answer is cycle and soak. Instead of running each zone once for 20 minutes, run it twice for 10 with an hour break in between. Our clay-heavy soils (looking at you, 78729) can’t absorb water fast enough in one long run. Half of it ends up in the gutter. Split cycles let the first pass soften the soil so the second pass actually gets down to the roots, which is where drought resilience lives.
Two more things. Hand watering with a shutoff nozzle is legal any day, any time, so use it on hot spots. And mow HIGH this month. 3 inches minimum on Bermuda, closer to 4 on St. Augustine. Tall grass shades its own roots. Scalping a stressed lawn in July is how you end up re-sodding in September.
THE NEIGHBOR
A few things worth knowing around our corner of Austin this July:
Don’t know your assigned watering day? Look it up at austintexas.gov (search “find your watering day”). Generally it runs off the last digit of your address.
If your HOA sends a nastygram about a brown lawn, Texas law is on your side. HOAs can’t fine you for drought-stressed turf during mandatory watering restrictions, and for 60 days after they lift. Keep that letter, respond in writing, cite the restrictions.
Katherine Fleischer Park in Wells Branch is peak summer right now: shaded playground, pool, and the trail network connecting to Mills Pond and the library. Keep an eye on the Wells Branch events page, they run free outdoor events all summer.
Reminder that hand watering your vegetable garden or a new tree is allowed any day with a shutoff nozzle. The one-day rule is for sprinkler systems, not your tomatoes.
THE FIXER
Problem: That yellow patch in your St. Augustine isn’t drought. It might be chinch bugs.
Here’s the July trap: a patch of St. Augustine turns yellow, you assume it’s thirsty, you hand water it for two weeks, and it dies anyway. Chinch bugs. They’re tiny, they feed at the edges of hot, sunny spots (especially along driveways and sidewalks where heat radiates), and their damage looks almost exactly like drought stress.
The test is simple. Water the yellow patch. Drought stress greens back up within a few days. Chinch bug damage doesn’t, and the yellow ring keeps expanding outward while the center goes brown and crunchy.
Want proof? Cut both ends off a coffee can, push it a couple inches into the soil at the edge of the yellow area, and fill it with water. If chinch bugs are in there, they’ll float up within five minutes. Little black bugs with white wing markings, about the size of a pencil tip.
If you catch it early, a targeted insecticide labeled for chinch bugs handles it. If the patch is bigger than a bath towel and spreading, it’s worth having someone look at it before you lose the whole sunny side of the yard.
THE SCOUT
There’s a two-story in Canyon Creek that spent the last few years losing a fight with the heat. Dead sago palms, a rose bush that gave up, mulch so old it had gone black. The kind of yard that makes you wince a little on your evening walk.
Not anymore! The whole landscape got rebuilt this spring: fresh beds, river rock, native plantings that actually want to live here, and (our favorite detail) the homeowner's stockpile of moss rock got worked right back into the new design instead of hauled off. Reclaimed stone, reclaimed yard. It flows from Tuscan up front to clean and contemporary out back, and it looks like a different property.
This one’s ready for the dog days. Is yours?
Real talk: July isn’t the month for big lawn projects. It’s the month for keeping what you’ve got alive, and watering is the whole game. If your sprinkler system has a broken head, a blocked nozzle, or coverage gaps, you’re wasting the one watering day you legally get.
Give us a call at (512) 387-6069 or visit groundsguys.com/locations/northwest-austin.
Keep Austin Mowed.