Tips On Setting Up A Proper Lawn Irrigation Schedule
Part of watering your lawn effectively is knowing when and where to place water on your lawn. It's no good just watering the lawn with your regular garden hose every Saturday morning. Grass has notoriously bad root systems which make them inefficient at holding onto and storing water. It makes you wonder why grass is the plant of choice on most properties. Setting up a proper lawn irrigation schedule can save you water and money.
The Most Common Problem
The most common problem that people have in making a lawn irrigation schedule is watering their lawns too much as opposed to too little. This is not only wasteful (and expensive) but also can promoted plant diseases in your lawn. You also can't risk making constant little still pools in your lawn where biting insects can breed.
What Plants Do You Have?
In order to set p a good lawn irrigation schedule, you need to take a close look at the plants on your lawn, yard and garden. The average lawn - if not smothered in harsh chemical fertilizers, weed killers and pesticides, will have a lot more plants in it other than grass (such as clover). You also may have trees, shrubs and flowers that have differing watering needs, due to their root systems and what soil types they prefer.
What Soil Types Do You Have?
Also in setting up a proper lawn irrigation schedule, you need to know what kind of soil types you have on your property. You might be surprised to find that you have a mix of types, but you may just have one type. Each soil type has differing watering needs. For example, sandy soil just doesn't hold onto water very well (similarly to grass) and so a lot of watering means a lot of wasted water.
Wet Soil, No Water
In order to avoid the most common lawn care maintenance problem of over watering, you need to set your lawn irrigation schedule so your lawn is NOT watered when the soil is still wet. With an automated or timed irrigation system, you can either manually override the schedule on rainy days or install a rain detector that adjusts the lawn irrigation schedule accordingly.
Also check with your local town or borough laws to see if there are any water restrictions to watering your lawn that you'll have to factor into your lawn irrigation schedule. For example, a state like Florida only allows watering on certain days, to insure that lawns won't gobble up the public water supply.
