Lawns and Water

What role do water and soil play with your lawn?

I was asked recently about a lawn that if they did not water it every day, it would turn brown and appear to be dead. He asked me why is that and what should he be doing and what should he not be doing?

He told me that he was watering for 5 min every day! He had an “expert” come and tell him what he was doing wrong. The expert said he was wasting water and not to water so much. He said to water twice per week for the same amount of water. So he did that but within two days of not watering the lawn had turned brown. The expert then told him that he should apply a lawn fertilizer because the grass needed to get fertilized for it to grow. So the person did that, watered it in well (as the expert told him to do) and then waited until the end of the week to water again, The expert said that it would take a few times of doing this before the lawn was able to handle the twice per week watering.

So after about two months of this and with the lawn still not recovering, he went back to daily watering, and the yard looks great (more or less), but he still feels that something is wrong.

And he is right.

By watering the lawn daily, or even 3 or 4 times per week, you are encouraging the lawn and other plants including trees, to have shallow root systems. The roots will go where the water is. Causes significant damage to the lawns root systems as well as to trees root systems which in turn weakens the lawn, trees, etc. and makes them more susceptible to pests and diseases.

All living things need water, too much will kill it, and not enough will do the same.

So what should this person be doing?

First off you need to water train the lawn. What this means is that you have to do it in steps.

The first thing you do is to aerate the lawn (should be done at least twice per year). You do this by renting an aerator for lawns. This little lawn mower looking device makes small holes in the lawn by removing small plugs it leaves behind for you to rake up and throw into your compost pile if you have one. Then you should top dress the lawn with compost that has been screened to remove and clumps. The compost should get spread about 1 inch over the lawn. The compost will go into the plugs as well. Then you should water in well to allow the compost to soak in.

Then the next step is to not to cut the lawn so often but to let the lawn grow to about 3 or 4 inches tall. Will help the garden to develop deeper roots as well as to provide shade so it won’t dry up so fast.

Try cutting once every two weeks.

The next thing to do is to change the amount of watering you were doing. It is better to provide a good deep watering twice a week then less watering more often. Is especially important for trees since they have both shallow roots and deep roots. If the deep roots do not get to the water, the whole tree will die. I notice lots of lawns that either were allowed to die, or were taken out and replanted with natives, and there is the tree slowly dying because it does not get enough deep watering (sure they hose it down once in a while but the water is still on top and not deep where it should be). Start off by doubling the amount of water you were watering already. So if you were watering four mins, then I would water eight mins twice per week. I would watch for the runoff. You will get run off at first because the soil is not used to the water and can not hold it yet.  So look at the watering and note when it started to run off. Change the time to go off before the runoff starts and leave the timer on for that length of time for about a month.  Make sure you apply a good organic lawn fertilizer that comes with microbes. These organic lawn fertilizers help the lawn to grow healthy root systems.

After that time (a month), notice how the lawn is doing. If it still looks like it needs more water, up the water another few minutes, watching for water run off. The goal is to water only twice per week with the right amount of water needed for that type of lawn.

Do not cut the grass at all for the first month and then cut it back to about 4 inches. If that is too long for you, try 3 inches. Then cut it every other week or even monthly depending on the type of grass you have.

I would blend native grasses with standard grasses. The native lawns will do very well, and you might even want to switch to 100% native lawn. Just remember that natives go dormant during the heat of summer and cold of winter so a blend would be better for all year round green.

You will also need to monitor the watering during different times of the year, water less during the winter months and a bit more during summer heat months. There are also many excellent ground covers you can get that will take the place of the lawn. Try Kurapia. A great ground cover with roots that go down 10 feet, so it requires little watering. Try Soil Solutions soilssolutions.com  They also have several other types of native ground covers. Kurapia is not native to California.

Any questions send me an email at andylopez@invisiblegardener.com

Love

andy Lopez

Invisible Gardener