Last Updated on January 24, 2024 by Brian Beck
I consistently find that there is a lot of confusion about taking care of the lawn, especially when it comes to watering. For some reason it seems intuitive to water very frequently and for brief periods of time. Most people in their mind think that this equates to consistency as they are being consistent but that is far from the truth. I actually have people bragged to me that they water sometimes twice a day for 7 to 10 minutes seven days a week. I quickly tell them as I’m going to tell you, this is the absolute worst way to water and I will tell you why. The whole reason for irrigation is to supplement water that we do not get the precipitation to fill in the gaps of what is needed so that the plant can use that water to move nutrients into the root into the cellular tissue of the plant to repair and grow using the acquired nutrients in the soil and atmosphere.
I tell my customers to water deep and a lot of times I need to explain what that means as deep is a subjective term. When you water you need to get the water 4 to 6 inches into the ground. I have discovered that in highly compacted largely in organic soils you can water for an hour and get the water maybe an inch into the soil. In a highly porous soil that is largely organic you can infiltrate several inches of water deep into the soil passing the point where you need to target and sequester it there due to the high levels of carbon. That typifies a healthy soil but most people soils are not healthy which may lead to some of the reasons why they don’t water thoroughly. Getting back to my point, when you water in a shallow manner and I mean for like 15 or 20 minutes, you surrender most of this water to the atmosphere through evaporation. It’s almost not worth the struggle of watering as the roots of the plant will adapt to where the resources are and guess what, they are near the surface! So when you water in a shallow manner you invariably damage your lawn by contributing to the thatch level in the lawn which is probably already too thick inhibiting the water from getting into the soil in the first place and then you compound this issue by training the roots to grow up. When the summer heat advances this causes a tremendous amount of fruit stress due to heat and dehydration. This combined with an inorganic soil that cannot hold water and a thick thatch that suffocates a lawn you set your lawn up for death and destruction come wintertime through winter kill.
Now I’m not saying that you need the water three or four days a week, quite the contrary. What I’m telling you is that you need to water at the right time which is at night, for longer periods of time to drive the water down into the soil once or twice per week. This combined with elevating the levels of carbon, or organic matter in the soil would drastically enhance your soil’s ability to hold water. Every single time that I shed this light on the subject, if the person is honest with me, they will admit to me several months down the road that it made a clear difference in how the grass was behaving. So there you have it, water deep and infrequent at night! Be sure to get an irrigation audit to make sure that the system is working otherwise it’s like putting bad spark plugs in a racecar, you will have misfires.
Watering frequency will differ throughout the year as transpiration rates increase plant respiration requires more water. This will help get you in the group so to speak, you can always find tune it as you learn to read the grass:
During the winter, only water when it’s above 40° as the ground is stiff and will not accept the moisture. Plan on watering once every two weeks and give it a good soaking if we don’t get any significant snowfall.
If the temperature is above 50° you should be watering once every 7 to 10 days, again very deep.
If the temperature is above 60° consistently you should be watering once per week.
If the temperature is consistently above 75° you should be watering twice per week. Remember to water deep this is vital!
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