During the summer it is very important to make sure that your lawn is receiving the proper amount of water. This cannot be achieved by watering during the day. Water must be applied in the late evening or early morning in order to prevent waste due to daytime evaporation.
- It is also important to consider that your watering schedule can significantly impact your battle against weeds such as Crabgrass. Many people more commonly refer to crabgrass as water-grass due to the nature of the weed to thrive in over-watered areas. Because of the tendency for crabgrass to grow in over-watered areas it is important to make sure that when watering your lawn there is no runoff or puddling. Runoff is evidence that the ground is saturated and therefore will not take any more water. Puddling provides ideal conditions for crabgrass to thrive.
Runoff is generally a result of compacted soil. In order to diagnose this you can insert a screwdriver or other metal probe into the soil and if it does not easily go down at least 4 inches than you may have compacted soil, which needs to be addressed. To treat this condition you can aerate either chemically with Soilbuster or mechanically with an aerator (both available at Abate-A-Weed).
- Perhaps your lawn is getting a large amount of water and you think it needs more because some areas appear to be drying out. The case may in fact be that those areas are dry, which means that the sprinklers need to be adjusted, but this doesn’t mean that they need to be on longer if they already cause runoff in other areas. On the other hand, the area may look dry because of dead or dying grass, but the soil may have plenty of water. In this case it is likely that there is a battle against fungus occuring right beneath your feet. This can be caused by humidity near the ground from watering during the day or watering too much. Depending on the particular situation you may need to cut back on watering and apply an appropriate dose of Bayer’s Fungus Control For Lawns. This will penetrate the roots of your grass to help fight off debilitating fungus.
BOTTOM LINE
The bottom line is that watering deep and less frequently is better than watering for multiple short periods throughout the day: i.e. water for 10minutes once per night rather than five minutes three times per day.
Helpful Products
Hydretain:
Granular or Liquid
Green as it Gets:
Turf Max, Garden Max, Pen Max, and Pro-Gro 365
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