“Brown and crunchy.”

That’s the way Bill Horan describes the state of many Fort Wayne-area lawns.

Although brown lawns in northeast Indiana in August and September are nothing new and generally not cause for alarm, area turf experts warn that this year’s unusually wet spring combined with an unusually hot and dry summer may have done in even some normally sturdy grass.

“It was a pretty drastic change from May to July. We had such a wet spring, and then we went about six or seven weeks with hardly any rain. And then the hot temperatures added to the torture for the turf,” explains Horan, educator for the Purdue Extension Service in Wells County.

Typically, Horan says, grass hereabouts simply goes dormant when it’s dry, will perk up with fall’s rains and cooler temperatures and be just fine in the spring.

But this year, there’s a good chance at least parts of a lawn are now carpeting heaven. The way you can tell, he says, is to use a pocket knife or trowel to dig up some dried-up grass and look at the crowns – the spot where the vegetation meets the soil.

If the crowns are just dormant, you’ll probably see some green threads of leaves on the plant, and it’s probably safe to do nothing. “If it’s all brown and crunchy, it’s probably dead,” he says.

So what to do? It’s not too late to embark on a lawn rescue mission, says Chris Leeper, president of Leeper’s Lawn Service.

“The month of September is a prime time for having a bad yard and getting it back in shape,” he says.

Here’s how:

Aeration. Lawns need oxygen, says Landry Linn, a landscape designer with Bruce Ewing Landscape Design. You can help them breathe by poking holes in the ground to break up drought-hardened soil. Some lawns also might benefit from what turf managers call “slicing,” which removes old thatch and grooves the soil.

Aeration removes soil plugs about an inch wide and 3 inches long and should be done after rain or thorough watering. You can rent a machine to do it.

Overseeding. You can add new grass seed in the fall without digging up the lawn. Press new grass seed into the holes left by aeration. Then keep the soil moist by deep and frequent watering, especially if drought continues through the fall.

The young grass will have two or three months to get established before temperatures drop too low and growth stops. Next spring, the young plants will have another few months to develop deeper roots before the summer heat sets in.

Disease management. You might need to call in a professional for this if in a week or two you’ve still got dead patches in your lawn surrounded by green, Leeper says.

Most grasses used in these parts can withstand about a month of drought, but this year’s dry spell was a bit longer, and a stressed lawn can more easily succumb to insects, diseases or pests, he says.

“You probably would have recognized it (the problem) by now in a normal year, but now you can’t see it because everything looks dead,” Leeper says.

Fertilizing. Fertilizing can be tricky when it has been dry, says Ricky Kemery, horticulture educator with the Allen County office of the Purdue Extension Service at IPFW.

“It’s a salt, and if it’s dry (already), it will really dry things out,” he says of conventional fertilizers. “You’ll burn up your lawn and have nothing.”

Some lawn problems this year might have been caused by late application of fertilizer in the spring followed by lack of rain not ameliorated by watering, he says – fertilizer causes grass to put energy into its leaves, at the expense of a deep root system, which makes the plants more susceptible to drought and heat.

Kemery says it’s a good idea to wait a couple of weeks to fertilize, until the soil has more moisture in it and daytime highs are consistently in the 70s. He prefers quality compost or Canadian peat moss to conventional lawn fertilizer. He recommends applying it to aeration holes before overseeding.

It’s important to water after fertilizing – to a 3-inch depth, if possible, he says.

Area lawn experts recommend a second application of fertilizer in the fall before Thanksgiving.

The fall is also an optimal time for using a weed-and-feed product on areas that aren’t being overseeded, they say.

Starting from scratch. If you’ve got big dead patches, “You might have to start over. You might have to tear up the (remaining) grass, till, rake and seed and spread a light coating of straw like a new lawn,” Linn says.

If that’s the case, it’s time to get busy, he says.

“The later you start in the season, the less successful you are” in sprouting sustainable grass, he says. “The ideal is between Aug. 15 and Sept. 15. Every week, after that … you’ll lose about a month of growth in the spring. Mid-October is the very latest around here.”

Switching grass: Whether or not it’s the result of global warming, the recent frequency of longer-lasting heat and drought, Hoosiers might have to rethink their approach to their lawns, Kemery says, because the typical strains of grass like cool temperatures.

“It hasn’t been so cool in recent years. We may have to consider different kinds of turf grass,” he says. “Bluegrass isn’t as happy here as it used to be when I was a kid.”

rsalter@jg.net