Is Your Lawn Drowning?

A healthy lawn is a joy to stroll, relax and play on. It can also be part of an environmentally friendly landscape. But, sometimes it can seem to be a mystery on how to achieve that lush, healthy lawn in the Florida environment. Since we have lots of sandy soils and experience long periods of warm and hot weather, many suppose that giving the lawn lots of water will help do the trick. Not so.

Photo credit: UF/IFAS.

But what harm can it cause to give the lawn plenty of water all the time? Isn’t that a good thing? No! Overwatering your lawn can lead to the following problems:

  • Development of fungal diseases (fungi love a moist environment!)
  • Increased insect pest pressure
  • More rapid thatch development
  • More weeds (those little emerging weed seedlings thrive on consistent moisture!)
  • Some weeds, like dollarweed and sedges, can be an indication of overwatering
  • A shallow root system when frequent, light watering is applied
  • Washing away of fertilizer down into the soil past the root system
  • Higher water bills.

Our lawns need, on average, about 1/2 to 3/4 “of water a week during the summer. This recommendation changes depending on soil type, shade, temperature, wind, and season. To figure out how long to run your sprinklers, watch this YouTube video from UF/IFAS.

We recommend running your automated system only when your lawn shows signs of needing water such as:

  • Leaf blades fold
  • The lawn looks ‘off-color’
  • Footprints remain and are visible

 

For more information:

Watering Your Florida Lawn

Gardening Solutions: Irrigation

Your Florida Lawn

 

Properly Water to Establish a Lawn

Properly Water to Establish a Lawn

Watering to establish lawn

Watering to establish lawn

When watering to establish a lawn or when renovating (redoing, patching, reestablishing, starting over, etc.) a lawn, we normally call for 2-3 “mists” throughout the day for the first 7-10 days until roots get established. These are just 10 minute bursts. Then back off to once a day for about ½ hour for 7-10 days. Then go to 2-3 times a week for about 7 days. By then your lawn should be established.

Of course, if we are experiencing adequate rainfall, you may not need to irrigate. Rain counts. But in the absence of sufficient rain, you’ll need to provide enough water at the correct time to allow your new sod to root – hence, the above directions.

A well designed and correctly installed irrigation system with a controller, operated correctly, really helps to achieve uniform establishment. It can be very difficult or impossible and inconvenient and time consuming to uniformly provide sufficient water to establish a lawn with hose-end sprinklers, especially if the lawn is sizeable and during dry weather. Most people are not going to do the necessary job of pulling hoses around on a regular basis to result in a well established lawn.

There is no substitute or remedy for incorrect irrigation when establishing a brand new lawn or when renovating an entire lawn or areas within a lawn.

It would be wise to not invest the necessary time and money if the new lawn cannot be irrigated correctly. Taking the gamble that adequate (not too much, not too little) rainfall will occur exactly when needed to result in a beautiful, healthy, thick, lush lawn is exactly that – a gamble.

An irrigation system is nothing more than a tool to supplement rainfall. As much as possible, learn to operate the irrigation controller using the “Manual” setting. It is also wise and is state law to have a rain shutoff device installed and operating correctly. The rain shutoff device overrides the controller when it is raining or when sufficient rainfall has occurred. Rain shutoff devices are relatively inexpensive and easily installed. Also, a good rain gauge can be an inexpensive tool to help you monitor how much rain you’ve received. Rain counts.

Too much water will result in rot, diseased roots and diseased seedlings and failure. Too little water will result in the sod, seedlings, sprigs or plugs drying excessively and failure to establish. The end result at best is a poorly established sparse lawn with weeds. Or complete failure.

For additional information on establishing and maintaining a Florida lawn, contact your County UF/IFAS Extension Office or visit http://hort.ufl.edu/yourfloridalawn.