To Water or Not To Water

As a eco-friendly lawn care professional, two of the biggest problems I see homeowners and business owners make is over-watering and under-watering their grass. In this post, we are going to specifically address over-watering. A lawn generally needs one inch of water or twenty to thirty minutes of water during the growing season, the growing season being Spring and Summer, and that water can come from irrigation if its not raining and can come from rain if it is.

Over-watering generally occurs during Spring or Fall, when we tend to get a fair amount of rain. If a customer runs the irrigation in addition to the rain we get, it tends to keep a lawns soil saturated with water and the water will do two things: It will displace the oxygen in a soil making that soil anaerobic, which just means lacking oxygen. When a soil lacks oxygen, that leads to the creation of destructive fungai, which leads to damage to your yard, those circular crop circle looking creations you see in your beautiful St Augustine grass. Spot them early and generally just shut the irrigation and chances are you’ll see it begin to clear up. Spot it late after the fungal circle has spread you’ll still want to shut the irrigation off, but you’ll need an antifungal product like neem oil or horticultural corn meal to treat it.

Other issues with over watering your lawn are that not only does it cost you money and waste a valuable resource but constantly giving your lawn water also damages the roots of your grass and they begin to rot, but watering the grass too frequently stunts the growth of healthy grass roots as well and you end up with stunted, shallow grass roots that will not be able to provide a lawn with adequate water when the temps do get hot over the Summer.

So, to wrap up, provide your lawn with one inch of water during the growing season all in one good deep watering, slightly less in shaded areas, and let the grass dry out a bit between waterings. During the heat of the Summer, you will probably need to water thirty minutes twice a week, again, slightly less in shaded areas. And with Fall and Spring having mostly mild temps and plenty of rain, we tend to advise our customers to shut any irrigation in November and leave it off until generally early Summer the following years. Saves money, encourages long, healthy grass roots and greatly reduces any instances of lawn fungus.