Is your grass dead or just taking a nap?
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Now, if you've looked out the back window this week or indeed the front window and thought your lawn is dead, I've got good news. It's probably just having a nap because grass has evolved over millions of years to survive dry spells. And during a hosepipe ban, it might actually be smarter than we are. Phil Smith is physicist, engineer, broadcaster, and you can find him at Phil of Science. You are very welcome to the programme. So, Phil, all is not lost if you're looking out at your garden right now and it's brown.
Yeah, no, it's not as crusty and dead as you might think. It's good news. It's doing what it actually, I suppose, was evolutionary designed to do. Like you said, it's evolved over millions of years to survive dry periods by going dormant. So like a good old volcano that sits around for a while and then erupts back again. Grass is doing something similar. It's kind of like when your phone, it goes into low power mode at the end when it's kind of nearing things. It's It's there to reduce, I suppose, energy loss. But when leaves go brown, they're to reduce water loss. So underneath the surface, the growing points are still alive. So if you've been looking out thinking, Jesus, I've killed the garden. Don't worry.
Your lawn is basically saying, relax, lads. I'll be grand when it rains.
So basically it's doing this on purpose. This is essential. This is intentional on the grasses part.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is, this is all about survival. Like green leaves are fantastic at making food through photosynthesis, which some people might've heard of, which is kind of photo with light and then synthesis in terms of synthesizing that into energy. Um, but what they're also the place leaves are where most of the water escapes from the plant. So when soil dries, dries out, the grass is sacrifices those leaves to protect the more important bits under ground. So like. Like a hedgehog that kind of curls up into a ball or a tortoise that hides in its shell, this is reducing exposure until conditions improve. So as soon as then we get a decent spread of rain, which, let's be honest, in Ireland isn't necessarily too far away, although lately it has been, then it'll be back out.
So, you know, watering our lawns is something, but it's potentially something that we could consider stopping actually at the moment, if that makes sense.
How interesting.
Is brown lawn grass actually dormant not dead?
So what you're saying is basically, is it that a new shoot of grass will grow up or is that brown scorched grass that we're looking at now, that'll basically turn green again?
Yeah, so parts will dry off and fall away and then there'll be new shoots that will come from the established. The thing about this is that, like I said, there's also a difference to how young and old your lawn or your grass is. So like when I was even saying there, but stop watering your lawns altogether, like that's for established lawns. Like a healthy lawn can survive weeks without watering. In fact, watering it every evening can actually make it weaker because the How would I put this? Plants are like teenagers. If you hand them everything every day, then they'll never learn to fend for themselves. So if water is available... Well, I mean, I just had to make that, you know, things that... It goes way beyond that age cohort, let's be fair.
Yeah, no, that's fair. If water is given to them every kind of day near the surface, the roots kind of stay shallow. But if water becomes scarce, you need those deeper roots into it. So actually, you know, watering deeply and less often...
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