October 4, 2004 Weekly Water Saving Tip

The temperatures last week were a little higher than the average, but the forecast for this week the temperatures are to be near the average. The temperatures continue to be warm, but the night time temperatures are cooling off. In a climate, such as ours, where the daytime temperatures still remain warm and the night temperatures are at least cooling down, it is important that the perennial plants in our landscape become dormant if they are going to survive the winter and remain healthy and vigorous. The shortening of the day light hours and cooling temperatures triggers the plants into dormancy, but we can aid in the induction of dormancy by reducing the frequency of irrigation. Plants that have a lot of new growth on them are more susceptible to frost damage than those with older, more hardened wood. It is important that you do little pruning in October this also makes the plant more susceptible to cold damage, by encouraging growth of new shoots or stems.

Irrigation this week for turf is be every 7-10 days. Make sure that you let the soil dry out a little more between irrigations, but make sure the plants are not allowed to dry out to the point that they become stressed. Now make sure you are watering the same length of time to get the water down into the root zone, just lengthen out the interval between watering.

Our lawns should be growing slow enough now that we can start to lengthen out the time between mowing. We should be mowing at the 2-2 ½ inch height to make sure the roots have sufficient energy to continue to grow when conditions are best. The closer the mowing the more reduced the root growth develops.

The weekly water saving tip is provided to Washington County Water Conservancy District by Dr. Frank Williams, professor of the BYU Horticulture department. If you would like any more information please call me, Julie Breckenridge, at 673-3617.