March 22, 2005 Weekly Water Saving Tip

Now is the time to watch your lawn and plants for water needs. If your lawn needs water, water down to the root zone. An inch of water is usually what is needed to do this. If you don’t know how long it takes for your system to put down this amount of water, check out the state’s conservation website at www.conservewater.utah.gov. You will find some great information there.

It is important that we have a healthy turf and a healthy turf requires that we use the best management practices that we have at our disposal. For a healthier lawn, and a lawn that will tolerate our high temperature summers, your irrigations need to be deep, and less frequent. Proper watering of the grass areas plays a significant role in the turf’s ability to tolerate stress and resist pest problems. It is important to remember that when a turf experiences some water stress in the spring it will be much more tolerant of the high temperatures in the summer. Turf that has not been allowed to stress, but is watered frequently in the spring, will develop a shallow root system where water must be applied constantly in the summer heat, if the turf grass is to survive. So, make sure deep and infrequent irrigations are followed.

Now, during irrigations, watch and make sure you don’t have runoff. (That’s when you see the water flowing off the turf area.) To prevent runoff, cycle the irrigation time. This means turning off the system when you see runoff, waiting for about an hour then repeating this cycle until the complete irrigation time has been met. The objective is to get the water down as fast as the soil can absorb it. Then after irrigation, turn off the sprinkler system’s clock, and water only as needed. The next watering should not occur until the soil’s surface is dried down 2-3 inches. As a guideline start checking around 7 to 10 days. You can check with a soil probe or a screw driver.

The Weekly Water Saving is provided to Washington County Water Conservancy District by Dr. Frank Williams of the BYU Horticulture Department. For more information, call Julie Breckenridge at 673-3617.