How Too Much Rain Impacts Your Lawn

If you live anywhere in little ol’ Aotearoa, you’ll be familiar with the all-too-common problem of having heavy rain impacting your lawn. Sometimes, it falls faster than your soil can absorb it, leading to puddles and flooding that takes its toll.

While you might assume that your lawns are robust enough to handle excessive rainfall every once in a while, it can actually cause a range of problems. Learn about the impacts of too much rain below – and what you can do about it.

Soil Compaction

Both heavy rain and traffic, like pets and children, can contribute to soil compaction. When your soil becomes compacted, you might notice that your grass is worn and patchy. This is because soil compaction stops water, air, and nutrients from being able to access the root zone. To solve this problem, you’ll need to wait until the puddles of water clear and get to work aerating your soil.

For a small lawn, soil aeration is as easy as poking holes into the ground with your garden fork. Pierce the ground down to around 5cm and move the fork prongs backwards and forwards. Do this every 10cm across your entire lawn.

However, if you have a larger lawn, you might see the value in purchasing aerator sandals and walking around your property or purchasing or renting a lawn aerating roller. These can be much faster methods than a garden fork!

Lawn Mowing Services Might Not Operate

If you have trouble mowing your lawns when your region experiences heavy rainfall, so will your lawn care service provider. As a result, heavy rain might mean your lawn mowing and other services are delayed.

You can encounter many problems while mowing wet, soggy lawns, with one of the most frustrating being clumps of grass getting stuck in the blades. There is also a significant health and safety risk, as slippery lawns might cause people mowing your lawns to have trouble maintaining grip. On slopes, this can be a recipe for disaster.

Your lawn might also suffer. When the ground is soft, lawn mower wheels can cause significant damage, which can take a long time to repair. As tempting as it can be to keep on top of yard maintenance, challenging weather conditions can sometimes see it put on the back burner.

Insects

We have plenty of beneficial insects that many homeowners love welcoming onto their properties, such as Harvestmen, spiders, ground beetles, hoverflies, and parasitic wasps. They can combat all manner of problems, like getting rid of tomato-destroying whiteflies, aphids, and slugs.

But not all insects are welcome. When your lawn is wet – or even when it isn’t – you can encounter troublesome critters like grass grub. Grass grub is our most significant lawn and pasture pest in New Zealand and is found throughout the country. They lay eggs in the soil throughout spring and summer, and the resultant larvae that hatch two weeks later start eating grass roots. They then leave infected and dead grass in their wake.

As many people encounter the most damage during winter, you’ll likely be dealing with soft ground, puddles of water, and bare patches. Fortunately, giving grass grubs their marching orders isn’t a challenging process.

You can use a specific grass grub-killing product from your local garden store throughout spring and summer. Most of these products are granular, so applying them just before moderate or heavy rainfall arrives is essential. During winter, you likely won’t be waiting long...

Flooding

Have you ever noticed that some parts of your property flood in heavy rain, but some don’t? You might have poor drainage, and addressing the issue might ensure it doesn’t happen in the future.

There are many effective ways to prevent flooding and keep your lawn from feeling the effects of too much water. You could start by diverting that extra water away, such as by installing gutters to collect rain from the roof.

You could also install a French drain, which essentially works like an underground creek. Install a drainpipe below the soil and let it drain water away to dry parts of your property. Many people install French drains when they have water pooling around their driveways, garden beds, and gutters.

You might even be able to reduce the effects of flooding simply by using heavier mulch products around your plants, investing in water-loving grasses and plants to soak up more water, and using rain barrels to collect water in heavy rain.

Weed Growth

Accelerated weed growth is a common problem people face after heavy rainfall because the water spreads weed seeds all over your lawn and gardens. While you might not be able to prevent this from happening, you can prevent those weeds from taking over.

Identify the weeds growing in your lawn, such as poa, broadleaf, Onehunga weed, moss, and clover, and purchase products from your local garden store to address them. If you only notice a small number of weeds, you can also pull them out by hand.

Don’t Let Rain Impact Your Lawn

We can’t control the weather, so we can’t always control the condition our lawns end up in or our ability to maintain them to a high standard at all times of the year. However, if you take care of weed growth, drainage problems, insects, and soil compaction, you might be surprised by how well your lawns fare.