Dormancy in your grass is initiated by the cooling temperatures in the fall for warm season grasses such as bermudagrass and St. Augustine. After your grass goes dormant, it will not take up and use any of the nutrients we put on the grass. The grass is "asleep". So a winterizer type of fertilizer has to be put down on your lawn before the grass is going brown for it to have any effect. Otherwise , you are simple wasting your money.
Also, in the spring, do NOT put down any fertilizer before your grass greens up. The expert advice is to not put down fertilizer until your GRASS(not the weeds) has grown enough that you have had to mow IT twice, so that your grass is actively growing before you fertilize. Let your neighbor waste his money, not yours.
Weed and Feed products usually are a bad idea...the only time to use this product is when it is time to fertilize( grass is green and growing) and you have a lot of broadleaf weeds( henbit, chickweed, spurge, dandelions, etc) in your yard, and also remember broadleaf herbicides should only be applied when the daytime high temperatures are consistently between 60 and 90 F.
walter
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Landscape Watering 101
Well folks, think you know how to water your lawn?? Probably not!
Infrequent watering, but deep slow watering turns out to be the best overall technique for watering. So if you have an irrigation system that comes on for 15 minutes every other day, then you are most likely doing it WRONG. When you water, you need for the water to get down to a depth of about 8" to properly water your grass, shrubs , trees, etc.
The unfortunate truth is that many irrigation systems are set by persons who do not know what proper watering is, so they set the systems INCORRECTLY. This is one of the most likely causes for losing plants in your landscape.
Also, drip watering is the most efficient, water wise technique for flower beds, shrubs, trees.....not sprinklers. In other words just water the plants, not all the area, so you save water and still do a good job of getting water to your plants. You have to use sprinklers on your grass in order to properly cover the large area it represents.
When you water, you should be trying to simulate a slow 1" rain once a week( perhaps twice if in a very hot droughty time). If you have a water system put a wide pan in the watering area, turn the system on , start timing, and when you have 1" accumulated in the pan, stop the timing and record the time. Then go to the watered area and dig down about 8" to see if the water has penetrated the soil to that depth. If it has, you have established how long your system has to be on to do proper watering. If not, then turn the system back on for small time increments, add that time to the original until you get the 8" depth moist(check in another location). The total time to accomplish the deep watering is YOUR watering time. Another person's soil could be very different to yours, so they would have to go through the same process you did to establish how long THEY should water.
I am passing this water advice along from the Texas Nursery and Landscape Association manual. Hope it helps some of you out there!!
walter
Infrequent watering, but deep slow watering turns out to be the best overall technique for watering. So if you have an irrigation system that comes on for 15 minutes every other day, then you are most likely doing it WRONG. When you water, you need for the water to get down to a depth of about 8" to properly water your grass, shrubs , trees, etc.
The unfortunate truth is that many irrigation systems are set by persons who do not know what proper watering is, so they set the systems INCORRECTLY. This is one of the most likely causes for losing plants in your landscape.
Also, drip watering is the most efficient, water wise technique for flower beds, shrubs, trees.....not sprinklers. In other words just water the plants, not all the area, so you save water and still do a good job of getting water to your plants. You have to use sprinklers on your grass in order to properly cover the large area it represents.
When you water, you should be trying to simulate a slow 1" rain once a week( perhaps twice if in a very hot droughty time). If you have a water system put a wide pan in the watering area, turn the system on , start timing, and when you have 1" accumulated in the pan, stop the timing and record the time. Then go to the watered area and dig down about 8" to see if the water has penetrated the soil to that depth. If it has, you have established how long your system has to be on to do proper watering. If not, then turn the system back on for small time increments, add that time to the original until you get the 8" depth moist(check in another location). The total time to accomplish the deep watering is YOUR watering time. Another person's soil could be very different to yours, so they would have to go through the same process you did to establish how long THEY should water.
I am passing this water advice along from the Texas Nursery and Landscape Association manual. Hope it helps some of you out there!!
walter
Wet Feet
Well, the first thing to say for sure is that I try to see the humor in things, myself particularly included. So feel free to disagree with anything I post up here, but at least consider my thoughts. Thanks.
walter
walter
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
