This Simple Test Will Tell you if Your Lawn is Dead or Dormant

The snow has melted away and your neighbor’s lawns are beginning to show signs of life with splashes of bright green. Your lawn, on the other hand, looks like matted down straw. Is the grass dead or simply dormant? Before you start digging up a perfectly healthy lawn to plant new seed or throwing down fertilizer willy-nilly, check its vital signs by administering this simple test.

Related: The Best Grass Seed for Clay Soil and How to Prep Your Lawn for Planting

The Tug Test

This is the easiest and most straightforward way to determine if your lawn is still among the living. Grab a handful of turf and pull. If the grass resists your efforts to pull it out of the soil, then it's dormant. The crowns and roots of the grass are still intact and clinging to the soil. Keep in mind that it is possible to pull out healthy dormant grass if you pull too hard. If you’re not sure, check the roots. If they’re white, the grass is just dormant. If a clump of grass pulls out of the ground with little to no resistance and very much resembling a toupee, then it's dead. Rot, grubs, or extreme cold during the winter months have killed off its roots and crowns.  

Find Some Green

If you're still not convinced after tugging on your turf, try finding signs of life in the grass. Get up close and personal with the blades. Spread them apart with your fingers to examine the crown, which is at the base of the grass blades where they meet the root just below the soil line. If the crown feels firm and has a green or white color to it, it’s alive. If the crown is brown and mushy or shriveled up, the plant is likely dead. 

Look for Patterns

Identifying patterns of discoloration in your lawn can be an indicator of whether your lawn is dormant or being slowly killed off by a pest. Lawn fungus and insect pests like grubs are prolific killers of grass, but they typically don’t attack the lawn all at once. If the entire lawn is brown, it’s more than likely dormant. If you have circular or irregular patches of brown, yellow, or tan around the lawn, then there's a good chance that those sections of grass are the victims of pests or disease. 

Check Soil Temperature 

Grass isn’t much for sticking with the calendar. Just because it turned green in late March a year ago doesn't mean it's going to stick to that timeframe this year. All your lawn cares about is soil temperature. Cool season grasses will come out of dormancy when soil temperatures reach 45 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Warm season grasses remain dormant until soil temperatures reach 60 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit. If you have a longer than average winter, your grass will sleep in until soil temperatures warm up. You can test soil temperature by using a standard meat thermometer and sticking it 3 to 4 inches into the soil surface. 

The Water Test

Water a 2 foot by 2 foot patch of lawn for a couple of weeks. Watering dormant grass wakes it up, breaking it out of the protective dormant state it enters to survive intense heat or cold. If the patch starts turning green after a week or two of watering, your lawn is merely dormant. If it remains brown even though soil temperatures remain consistently above 45 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s likely dead. 

Related: Should You Water Your Lawn in Winter? Most Homeowners Get This Wrong

If It’s Dormant

If your lawn is merely dormant, your response is simple–leave it alone. Resist the urge to fertilize dormant grass and don’t rake it in an attempt to wake it up. Adding nitrogen to a dormant grass will wake up your grass early, making it susceptible to damage from a late frost, while aggressively raking a dormant lawn will damage its crowns. 

If It's Dead

If you’ve confirmed that parts of your lawn are dead, then you’ll need to go through the process of removing the dead material and planting new seed.