Help Watering Grass


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Does anyone know how much water my yard should get ?

I have heard from 4-8 inches per month, I live in San Antonio, Texas, and the temperatures in the summer can be anywhere from 85-105f.

I plan on watering on Monday and Thursday each week.

TIA

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as you will pretty much cook your grass if you do it in the afternoon.

As far as water per yard, I would go at around .5 gallon per square yard. That should suffice.

BB

LOL

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Contrary to an earlier post, watering at night is terrible for your lawn.

Watering should be done during early morning hours- Most lawns will respond better to early morning watering. Watering at night induces fungus to grow on the grass plants causing injury or death to the plants. Diseases such as summer patch, dollar spot, brown patch are encouraged by moisture on the leaves for prolonged periods of time.

If you water at night, the grass plant will stay wet all through the night making the problem worse. If you water during early morning, the plant has a chance to dry off by early morning reducing the problem. Fungus can wipe out an entire lawn in under a week so be careful!

Watering should be done on infrequent, but deep watering cycles Depending on the type of grass and time of year, you will need to put down aprox. 1" at a time during watering. An ideal way to determine how much water has been put down is to use a "catch can test". This amounts to no more than placing a coffee can in the path of your sprinkler and measuring how much water it catches in an hour, or 30 minutes. This will tell you your sprinkler or system's "precipitation rate". This will be very important in determining how long to water.

If watering manually, you will have to time your water cycles to know when to move your sprinkler. An automatic system will turn the water off on each section of the lawn after a pre-determined amount of water has been applied. Then the system will turn on the next section and off as described before, until the entire lawn has been watered.

-TR

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I can tell you watering around 8:00pm brought my grass back from the brink of collapse. it was about 3 acres of Kentucky Blue grass, and had it not been for that I think I would have lost it.

BUt I agree, in general its best not to watering your lawn in the wee hours of the night.

ANd now from a PRO standpoint.

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Watering Lawns Properly

Cool season lawn grasses, such as Kentucky bluegrass, perennial ryegrass and the fine fescues, vary in the amount of water needed for good growth. Factors such as the soil, weather and management practices all have a role in water needs of lawns. In general, about 1 to 1.5 inches of water per week is needed to maintain green color and active growth. Cool season grasses naturally slow down in growth and may go dormant in hot weather.

An important decision to make before summer is to either water lawns consistently as needed throughout the season, or let lawns go dormant as conditions turn warm and dry. Do not rotate back and forth. In other words, don't let the grass turn totally brown, apply enough water to green it up and then let the grass go dormant again. Breaking dormancy actually drains large amounts of food reserves from the plant.

When is it time to water? The first few warm days of summer does not automatically indicate it's time to water lawns. In fact, allowing lawns to start to go under mild drought stress actually increases rooting. Watch for footprinting or footprints remaining on the lawn after walking across it (instead of leaf blades bouncing back up). Grasses also tend to turn darker in color a they go under drought stress. Sampling the root zone soil could be another option.

In general, water as infrequently as possible. Water thoroughly so moisture gets down to the depth of the roots. Exceptions to this general rule includes newly seeded lawns where the surface needs to stay moist, newly sodded lawns that have not yet rooted into the soil of the site, or when summer patch disease is a problem. Otherwise, avoid frequent waterings, which promote shallower root systems and weeds (i.e. crabgrass). Given a choice, water early in the day when lawns are normally wet from dew. Avoid midday due to evaporation and at night due to potential increased chances of some diseases.

Spread the water uniformly across the lawn. Sprinklers vary in distribution patterns and require spray overlap for uniform coverage. Placing coffee cans or similar straight-sided containers on the lawn can help measure water application rates. Avoid flooding areas or missing other spots. On heavy clay soils and slopes, watch for excessive runoff; it may be necessary to apply the water in 2 applications to assure it soaks in.

Finally, there are some measures to conserve water used by lawns. Mow higher, avoid excess nitrogen as warm weather approaches, limit traffic over the lawn, improve turf rooting, control thatch and soil compaction and avoid pesticide use on drought stressed lawns.

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Further

Irrigation can be applied at any time during the day or night. Both day and night watering have advantages and disadvantages. Midday watering cools the turf and reduces heat stress on hot summer days. If drainage is poor, pools of standing water can become very hot and result in turf death due to scalding. Midday watering is also relatively inefficient due to substantial evaporation losses. Night watering may incite or aggravate disease problems. However, the turf is usually wet during the night anyway, even if irrigation is withheld, because of dew formation. Recent research has suggested that the duration of leaf wetness (the number of hours that the leaf blade is actually wet) has a greater impact on disease incidence than night watering per se. In that case, watering during early evening or late morning (just prior to or following dew formation) could result in increased disease by prolonging leaf wetness. Night irrigation helps to conserve water because of minimal evaporation at night. Night watering should be avoided, however, when disease is present and actively damaging the lawn, or during periods of very hot, humid weather. Very early morning watering, before dew has dried, is the best solution, because it provides for efficient use of water (low evaporation) and does not contribute to disease pressure.

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ENJOY.

BB

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I just wanted to interrupt you guys and point out that when you report posts here at neowin it is taken seriously. DO NOT report a post unless you have valid reason and/or the post or thread clearly violates forum rules.

Thanx for understanding

Keldyn;)

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I'm guessing that Timan reported uutcast for ragging on his mom ?

Either way, thanks for the info, I was interested to see if this would get a reply, since I know there are a bunch of people here that don't even own homes or care about grass.

I'm thinking I'll go 6 inches per month, watering twice a week (Monday and Thursday morning) and divide that 6 inches by 8 waterings.

If the lawn looks good from there I might go lower until I get an ammount that's not too much or too little.

Other than that I'll follow most basic lawn care practices.

Thanks again guys, I wasn't able to find any really good links on Google.

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How about you jsut go out late afternoon, and just water it?

everyone has like built in common sense of when the lawns had enough and when it hasnt had enough. Its just common sense, you dont learn how to garden by reading essays on the stuff, you learn by getting out there giving it a go and getting experience, and if need be learning for mistakes.

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