It’s the middle of summer, and it’s hot! Depending on where you live, you may not have seen any rain for weeks; and you may need to conserve water for your lawn.
If you have cool season grasses, you may notice that your lawn has gone dormant. It’s brown and crunchy underfoot. And you may feel like the soil underneath is concrete.
And if you live in drought-prone areas in the U.S., your city may reduce the days you can water your lawn or face a fine.
How can you save your lawn this summer?
How to Conserve Water in Your Lawn with These 6 Tips
While promoting water conservation may not be the answer to all of your dried turf woes, you can learn tips that will save your grass in the long run while reducing how much water you use on it.
These six tips will help you conserve water in your lawn:
- Follow the 1/3 rule when mowing your lawn: Only take off the top third each time you mow your yard. Your turf uses less energy when it’s allowed to grow taller and will need less water to survive.
- Don’t mow your lawn when the grass is dormant: You can kill your grass by cutting it while it’s bone dry. If you have cool season grass, it’s not growing, and mowing causes it more stress.
Read more: Summer DIY Lawn Care, Tips for a Beautiful Lawn!
- Only give your lawn 1”-2” of water per week, including any rainfall. Your turf needs a deep soaking once or twice a week. Light, daily sprinkles don’t penetrate the soil and won’t reach the root zone.
- If your city has water restrictions, it’s okay not to water your lawn in order to conserve water for up to six weeks if it’s healthy and dense. However, it’ll take two weeks of deep watering to revive a drought-stressed lawn.
- Buy a Brinly Lawn Sprayer. Our lawn sprayer can spray water to the root area of lawns and landscapes. The swing-out booms reach 90” spray width to cover large areas, and the hose dispenses water at a 2 GPM flow rate for excellent power.
- Invest in an in-ground lawn sprinkler. While installing an irrigation system is expensive upfront, but you will conserve water and you’ll find that you save money and water in the long run.
You’ll also comply with your municipality when you include soil moisture sensors and set the sprinkler system’s time to go on and off within a specific period.
If you have an older lawn sprinkler system, you can have it recalibrated to include Bluetooth technology, water-saving nozzles, rotors, sprayers, and other newer system parts.
Learn more: Check Out Our Lawn Maintenance Calendar for Cool-Season and Warm-Season Turf
5 Secrets of a Healthy Lawn
As climate change affects our weather patterns, and we experience longer dry periods without rain, you must invest in lawn care for the entire season even.
Healthy turf begins with healthy soil; and conserving water is important during a heat wave. And if you keep the ground underneath you porous and teeming with micro-organisms, you will produce grass that can stand up to hot summer days with infrequent rain.
Here are five secrets of a healthy lawn:
- Core aerate your lawn according to its needs. For example, cool season grasses get aerated in the fall, and warm season grasses get aerated in the spring.
You should also overseed your lawn after you aerate it. A lawn roller will push the seed deep into the soil for quick germination.
- Since you only need to aerate your soil every two years, dethatch your lawn on the off years to reduce thatch that leads to disease and keeps water from penetrating the soil.
- Test the soil to see what nutrients are missing from it. You should also check for the soil’s pH at the same time. Once you get the results back, apply the fertilizer and other soil amendments needed to correct the dirt.
You’ll need a fertilizer spreader to put down fertilizer and soil amendments.
- Before each season, get your mower blades sharpened to make a clean cut. Dull mower blades cause tears and rip the grass blades, opening up your turf to lawn diseases and insect infestation. Your turf doesn’t need more issues when it’s already drought-stressed.
Watch more: How to Assemble the Brinly Spike Aerator & Drop Spreader Combo
- Limit foot traffic if you have clay soil. Have designated areas where people can walk, and kids can play to reduce soil compaction.
And you don’t want to park your cars on the lawn because the above increases soil compaction. And soil compaction doesn’t allow water, sun, and oxygen to go deep into the soil.
Brinly Has the Lawn Care Equipment to Keep Your Grass Healthy
If you want to conserve water in your lawn, you need to provide regular seasonal care to it.
At Brinly, we have premium lawn and garden equipment so you can treat your yard like a pro. In addition to the products mentioned above, we have many other lawn and garden products to help you with creating and maintaining a beautiful property throughout the year, such as:
- Dump carts
- Tow-behind carts
- Ground engaging equipment
- Spike and plug aerators
- Lawn sweepers
- ZTR products.
You can buy your next Brinly lawn care and garden products online. If you have questions about your Brinly lawn and garden product, contact our customer service today by dialing 877-728-8224 or filling out our contact form.
Source:
GreenviewFertilizer.com, Drought Resistance Qualities of Cool-Season Grasses.
