Every year we hear about reducing our water-use on lawns during the summer. Unfortunately, summer is the worst time to start reducing your watering. There is some good news, however. Your lawn can be trained to use less water but the training starts NOW! Follow these steps this spring to prepare your lawn for summer.
- Don’t water until the lawn needs it. All too often I see homeowners start an every-other-day watering program as soon as the secondary water is turned on. For the past two years, I have gone until June before I turned my sprinklers on!
- Get water deep into the root system on the first watering. It’s the roots that take up the water and getting water deep into the soil allows the roots to grow deeper (roots won’t grow in dry soil).
- Mow the grass at 2 ½”. Longer grass blades results in longer roots. The higher grass shades the soil and prevents the soil from drying out as quickly. This will allow the lawn to go two or more days between waterings.
There is a lot of room for improvement in using less water on our lawns. Those who perform water audits show that the average lawn is getting 100” of water per year; Hawaii doesn’t receive that much water! If you want someone to take a look at your sprinkler system, give us a call. I know qualified companies that do this type of work. Talk to one of our Moore Green technicians for help in setting your sprinklers correctly.