Saturday, October 31, 2009

At Last! What You Need to Know About Watering Your Grass

By Dewey 'Jeep' Capasso

Question: How much should I water my grass exactly?

A fairly common question actually. For which a pat answer is often provided when really the best answer is "It depends." Because there are many things that come into play when answering it.

The rule of thumb you see most often shared is to water an inch a week. But what happens is that rules of thumb are all too son taken to be iron clad rules by some. Chiseled in stone as it were and to be adhered to at all costs.

I put it that way because how much and often you need to water comes down to a number of things. So there is no one size fits all answer that covers the issue. Because it can't.

For instance how often to water depends on how often it rains. Obvious I know. But I had to say it.

Along the same lines you really only want to put on the water if your lawn is in stress. In other words it's not like it's waiting for a week to pass for it's next drink. Whenever you walk on your lawn and can see your foot prints or it looks kind of limp, well that's the time to activate the sprinkler system.

What type of grass do you have? Different varieties have different watering requirements.

Your mower setting comes into plays as well. The shorter you cut your grass the more water it will likely take to maintain a decent looking lawn. Plus whether you bag the clippings or not matters too.

"How's your roots?" is another consideration. You want the roots of your lawn to be deep because that means you'll have less need to water as often. The way to get that is to water deeply and infrequently. Which the one inch a week rule supporters would support wholeheartedly. Just keep in mind water that soaks in beyond the root zone does your grass absolutely no good whatsoever.

Grass Truth: The height of the blade dictates the depth of the root. The longer the blade the deeper the root.

It's also wise to let the top of your root zone to dry out. Doing so helps keep diseases at bay, weed seeds from germinating, and causes shallow rooted weeds to die off.

Another factor is how much sun the grass gets. The more sun the faster is it likely to dry out.

Finally you don't want to put the water down at such a rate that it runs off. Kinda defeats the purpose don't you think.

You see? There's more to this than mindlessly muttering the one inch a week rule over and over like some magic chant. These think abouts, when thought about and applied, can produce a greener, thicker stand of grass with less water in your yard too.

About the Author:

No comments: