Watering
- By jimboom_admin
- •
- 29 Oct, 2014
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Watering presents us with a balancing issue. Your lawn, like yourself is dependent on water, but also like us, if it gets too much water it will die. Your lawn contains about 70 to 80 percent of its weight in water. The weight of your lawn clippings is about 90 percent water. In general, while more people worry about not watering enough, more lawns are destroyed by doing exactly the opposite.
How Often Should I water?
The answer here is to always practice water conservation and to water wisely. When establishing a lawn, be it from seed or turf, there is a definite watering schedule required. When you properly water your new lawn, you are helping to establish its future growth pattern. Be sure and give your new lawn about 1 inch (2.5 cm) of water within a half hour of establishing – after that, water daily in order to keep the lawn moist enough to encourage good root growth. This will take about two weeks. After that you can change to a less frequent more deep watering schedule.
How Much?
An established lawn will generally only need about 2 inches of water a week, depending on a number of factors. Just how much your lawn will need will depend on its overall health and its ability to withstand drought as well as its overall use pattern. Different types of grass will have different needs, and seasonal changes will also have an effect. Another factor would be the soil type your lawn is planted in.
It does not require an expert opinion for you to know when your lawn needs water. Simply looking at it will be sufficient for you to know when it is needed. If there are still footprints visible after about a half an hour you need to water. In a well-watered lawn footprints will disappear within a few minutes. Another method is to use a soil probe. You don’t need anything fancy here, a simple screwdriver or a large spike will do. The amount of pressure you need to push the probe into the soil will show you whether or not you need to water. A little pressure means you are okay, a lot of pressure means you need to water.
