Get that lawn started right!

Got a lawn? Its spring and we’re starting into what I call “the irrigation season.” But this won’t be an ordinary irrigation season and this year is not an ordinary year as we continue to face “The Drought that Ate California!”

The State Water Resources Control Board just recently passed Phase 2 of the Emergency Water Conservation Regulation and it now requires water agencies to limit the number of days per week that customers can irrigate landscapes.

Love your lawn? Ok, calm down and take a deep breath. The good news is, two days per week is the RIGHT amount to water your lawn! The rest of the good news is that now is the right time of the year to get the lawn started off on the right foot…er, root.

Did you know many plants continue to grow their roots in winter even though they’ve lost their leaves? Wise person that you are, you turned your irrigation off for the winter and the grasses have stretched out their roots. Start by watering once a week. As the soil dries throughout the week, the grasses will be inspired to grow even deeper roots. Water once a week until the weather gets hot and dry, then increase to two days a week.

It takes one-half to one inch of water to dampen the soil six to twelve inches, that’s the zone where the grass roots live. Watering more than that just soaks the soil below the root zone. Thanks for recharging the groundwater, but it’s not doing your lawn any good! So, where on your irrigation controller is the setting for inches? The controller has settings for minutes!

It takes a bit of effort to find out how many minutes equals half an inch. Get a handful of cat food cans. You don’t have a cat? Get a handful of same-size, straight-sided containers. Coffee mugs could work. Place them around the lawn in one of the zones and run the irrigation until the most of the containers have half an inch of water in them. That is how many minutes to run that zone. Now move on to the next zone. Remember to write those zone minutes down and post next to the irrigation timer.

Or you can use the quick and dirty method. Run the zones with rotors (rotors shoot out a thin stream of water that sweeps back and forth) for 30-40 minutes. Run the zones with sprayheads (sprays in a fan) for 15 minutes.

Finally, water in the early morning hours when the temperature is coolest, and there’s less wind. We’re trying to get the water into the soil after all!

Or contact TCCWD and make an appointment for a FREE Irrigation Check-up! Call Liz at (661) 822-5504, or send an email to [email protected].