Watering your lawn and landscape.
Many of you have asked me for years “How long should I be watering my lawn?” The answer is simple, long enough. Just kidding, it’s not that simple.
To answer that question, The University of Idaho put out an article that states Kentucky blue grass in southeastern Idaho will require 1” of irrigation per week in the spring/fall and 2” during the hotter summer months. Now the question still remains “HOW LONG SHOULD I WATER?!” Haha I promise I’m getting to the answer. We need to do the first step, find out how much water your sprinklers are putting out. Since there are so many variables when it comes to your sprinkler system i.e. system pressure, nozzle size, type of sprinkler head, etc… Now how we figure that out is simple, we will grab a container of some sort, whether it be a tuna can, Tupperware, or whatever you have to catch water. Next you’re going to set them throughout your first zone of sprinklers, then run them for 10 minutes. After you’ve run them we need to measure how much water was captured. Let’s say you caught .10”, from then you’ll calculated how long you need to run your sprinklers to achieve your desired irrigation.
There! We’ve now figured out how much and how long to water your lawn!
Now to the more important part, when should you water your lawn. The best time is during the early morning hours before the sun comes up so you don’t have as much evaporation. The biggest trick to get the soil wet in our area is to water for 5 minutes and the give it 5 minutes of the sprinkler being off. Now what this does is allows the moisture to penetrate the soil and not just run off.
Another HUGE thing is deep watering. The best thing you can do for your lawn is to water every other day. The reason behind this is because when you go a day in between watering it encourages the roots to stretch out and search for water. This makes your grass way more drought tolerant vs. watering every day because when you water every day your grass roots are typically shallow and when Mother Nature turns the heat up your grass will become heat stressed and look awful, so let’s keep your lawn looking great and water it the right way 😊.
Now, onto your trees and shrubs. Trees take money to plant, hours to cultivate, and years to replace so they should be greatly considered on proper irrigation. Trees and shrubs have a vast root system but most of the feeder roots are within the top 12” of the soil out to the drip line. The best way to water them is to use a drip system or a soaker hose that waters slowly and saturates the top layer of soil. During extreme drought trees need 10 gallons of water per week per inch of trunk diameter measured. So if your tree is 3” in diameter you’ll need 30 gallons per week.
Now you’re a pro at irrigating your landscape! Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions because I’d be more than happy to help!
Until the next blog,
-Hollis Lloyd
