Garden Watering Guidelines For a Good Looking Yard
Probably one of the most misunderstood facets of lawn attention is properly watering the grass. Watering for to long or not enough are the most typical mistakes homeowners make. But done properly it can cause a good looking, healthy yard that's the envy of the neighborhood. Here are some lawn watering tips to keep your landscape looking good all growing season long.
The most efficient and effective way to water your lawn is to ensure that you soak the soil long enough for the water to penetrate down to the lowest part of the basic zone. For bluegrass this is normally 6 to almost eight inches deep while many other grasses are in the 8 to 11 inches range. The idea is to become water deep into your lawns active root zone but doing so does require a little of lawn watering research over the period of about a day.
Here's how you can do it by using a simple formula devised at a well known college or university. Turn on your sprinklers and let them run for 15 minutes then watch for twenty fours. Once that time is up dig a little hole to determine how deeply water penetrated. There are also moisture probes that can do the same task without searching a hole.
You can use this data to figure out how long you need to operate your sprinklers when you water. To do this take the depth of the moistened soil you calculated and divide 120 by that number. So if the water soaked to a depth of 5 inches your formula would look like this; 120/5 = 24 minutes. So it is going to take 24 minutes of watering to soak your soil to a depth of 5 in .. To get 10 in . of water penetration you would need to water for 48 minutes.
When you establish how long you need to water your lawn do not deviate from this schedule. Likely to also need to keep an eye out for water runoff before the designated time is up. If water does begin to run off your yard turn the water off for an hour to let the water soak in; after an hour has passed turn on the water and finish the allotted time period.
Another question on many homeowners' minds is when is the best time to water? Early morning is the best time because the temperature is cool and there is rarely any wind. This ensures that little water is lost through evaporation or gets windblown away from the grass. Watering later in the day or evening can help reduce evaporation loss but unearths your lawn to diseases because it stays moist over night.
Yet another thing to be aware of is realizing whenever your lawn needs to be waters. If the blades of grass get started to fold or roll and they commence to demonstrate a bluish or boring green color it is a good sign that the lawn needs water. Also watch the how fast the grass rebounds after walking on it. If the grass does not spring back up after walking on it you need to increase your watering times.