Irrigation or watering your lawn.
The importance of water to your lawn.
When? and how? – are two very essential aspects of watering your lawn.
Water is the lifeline to your plants; it is a vessel for carrying essential nutrients to the roots of plants
Depending on air temperature, evaporating, species of grasses and other reasons, your lawn can lose up to 1 to 1.5 l/m2 of moisture a day. It can vary because of the reasons mentioned above.
You can use garden hose with a sprinkler, this sprinkler can be secured into the ground. This is a time-consuming route, as you must make sure that sprinkler is moved from one spot to another to get an even coverage. Besides there is always hose laying around in the garden. Do not use hose without an appropriate watering attachment – this way you can damage your lawn, and it is not practical at all.
How to water your Lawn.
General rule of thumb – a lot, but not too often
It is very difficult to tell you exactly how often you must water your lawn. It depends on various aspects. But in general, on a normal, dry Summer you should water your lawn at least once a week. As the weather gets hotter increase the times of watering, water more often.
Most lawns need the equivalent of 10-40 litres of water per meter squared (keeping in mind, that in can vary depending on type of soil, seed etc.). Water ordinary grasses deeply, at about 15-20cm depth. Deep, less frequent watering encourages deep and healthy roots. Shallow, frequent watering leads to shallow, drought – vulnerable root system.
- Set up your irrigation system.
- Monitor how much water your irrigation system provides.
- Few minutes after watering, dig a small square patch of your lawn (at a depth & width of a shovel)
- Measure how deep the water has soaked in. It should be at least 15cm.
- If there is not enough, set up your sprinklers again.
- There is no need to soak the soil deeper than 15cm.
Do this once, and you will know for the next time!
When to water your lawn?
Water your lawn early in the morning – around sunrise.
Early morning watering reduces loss to wind and evaporating and allows the water to soak in before sunlight heats the soil. This way you will avoid spreading any disease or fungus. Watering during the hottest part of the day is not economical – almost 90% off water will evaporate. During very hot spells (above 30 degrees) we recommend cooling down your lawn, set your sprinklers for about 5 min.
When walking on your lawn footprints disappear fairly quickly (that’s if the lawn is not too overgrown).
Here are few signs that your lawn needs water:
- You notice blue–grey shade creeping into your grass. (it’s time to water)
- Footprints leave white marks and grass does not lift back. (try not to let it go this far!).
