Highlights
- Edouard soaked the East side of town and barely touched the West, PG 1
- Armyworm watch is ON if you got the rain — PG 2, Pest section
- Fall feeding window is open, but let the ground dry out first
- Cooler nights are coming — time to start your fall garden
- Municipal channels just got a real workout — PG 3
August in Review
August did what August does for most of the month — hot, mostly dry, the kind of stretch where chinch bugs and grubs stay on your radar and not much else changes week to week. Then, right at the very end of the month, we got a reminder that hurricane season isn't over just because it's been quiet: Tropical Storm Edouard came ashore near the Texas-Louisiana line and moved through Southeast Texas.
Here's the part that matters for how you read the rest of this newsletter: Edouard was not a whole-Houston event. The heaviest rain — several inches, with isolated totals near 9–12 inches — fell mostly east of I45, toward Chambers, Liberty, San Jacinto, and Polk counties, and the Beaumont side of the metro. If you're in that footprint, your yard is probably still drying out. If you're west of I-45 — Katy, Cypress, the west side generally — you likely saw clouds, some wind, and a lot less rain than the news coverage suggested. Check your own rain gauge before you decide how much of this month's advice applies to your yard, because "Houston got soaked" doesn't mean your particular zip code did.
September – Action Items for Your Lawn, Landscape, and Garden
September is usually where Houston starts handing us a break, and the extended forecast backs that up — highs easing into the upper 80s to low 90s instead of sitting at 100, and a real chance of rain showing up in the 10-day outlook even after Edouard clears out. Nights should start dipping into the low 70s by the end of the month. None of that means the season is over, but it does mean the character of the work is shifting from "survive the heat" to "set up for fall."
Lawn
Mowing
Keep mowing on schedule even as growth starts to slow. Cooler nights will eventually pump the brakes on St. Augustine, but we're not there yet, and skipping a cutting because it "felt like fall" is how you end up scalping a lawn that grew three inches while you weren't looking.
- You can start easing the mower height down slightly toward the end of the month, but hold at 3.5– 4 inches for now — especially if you're on the wetter side of town, where disease pressure is easier to trigger right now.
- Sharp blades still matter everywhere. If you caught Edouard's rain, a torn grass tip in humid, wet conditions is exactly how fungal problems get started.