Dog poop is not a fertilizer for your lawn and shrubs. Due to their high-protein diet, dog waste is highly acidic and will actually burn your grass creating brown patches.

Seasonal actions for water and soil health:

• Keep grass clippings off of paves surfaces. If mowing around a ditch, spray clippings away from the ditch.
• Consider helping out with a public raingarden through VLAWMO's adopt-a-rainarden program. 
• Pay attention to watering needs more than relying on assigned odd/even watering days. Your assigned day for watering doesn't automatically mean watering is necessary on that day. Turfgrass typically requires only 1"/week to survive. Summer dormancy is a normal part of grass' life cycle just as it goes dormant in the winter. 
• Check-in on irrigation systems. Be sure they're set to water 1"/week so that grass stays alive but reduces excessive watering. Accommodate for rainfall into the weekly count, and avoid irrigating when it's raining. 
• Fix errant sprinkler heads so that they're not spraying onto pavement. 

Looking ahead: 

• Adjust downspouts to drain onto a grassy area or to flow over grass before it reaches pavement. 
• Observe where stormwater runoff is traveling over pavement and visualize how this impacts winter maintenance. Redirecting downspouts, extending downspouts, or even channeling downspout connections beneath sidewalks can all reduce ice formation and winter maintenance chores. 

Help out in a Drought 

Green Up your Lawn, not Lakes and Rivers