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How To Water Your Lawn
By Leslie Lee
As young kids, we learnt that all living things need water for life. For
plants however, they need water not only as one of the ingredients
to manufacture food but for germination, growth, photosynthesis, and
temperature control. They need enough of it to dissolve and absorb
nutrients from the soil to assemble the food manufactured in their leaves.
Do you know that about 90 percent of the water that plants absorb
transpires into the air for temperature control? Thus plants require alot of
water. This is because when they transpire more water than they absorb,
they can take up fewer nutrients, and eventually cause them to stop
photosynthesizing and hence creating food. In the end if the situation
continue, they eventually wilt and turn brown.
Interestingly, plants like
grasses have evolved to survive dry spells, however, by going into
dormancy. The shoots and foliage die, but if the crown and rhizome, or
stolen buds survive, their tissues will start new growth when moisture
returns. Given that, different types of grasses differ in drought tolerance.
Generally tall grasses with deep, well fed roots tend to survive droughts
best. Thus deep, infrequent watering encourages root development, and
12" of water penetration is about right.
Another important factor to take into consideration is the soil quality.
Since soil dries out from the top down, good soils should soak up water,
hold it awhile, then let it drain down slowly, feeding the roots gradually.
Thus deep watering takes the mechanics of soil moisture into
consideration. Clay takes a long time to absorb water, holding it so tightly
that it does not drain away quickly and can even suffocate the plant.
Sandy soils absorb water quickly, but it drains right out again. The best soil
is an in-between, a loam with enough clay and silt to hold moisture but
enough sand to encourage good drainage.
Watering has to be evenly distributed over the lawn for uniform growth
and appearance. If the lawn has dry patches, measure water coverage in
containers spaced evenly under the sprinklers. You may need to
supplement automatic sprinkling with hand watering to wet the dry
patches. To control water waste because of run-off, encourage the use
of low-flow sprinkler heads. Since water flows downhill, sloped lawns
won't need as much watering at the bottom as the top.
If you see that your lawn wilts fast as the ground dries out in spring,
chances are that it has short roots, and the water has dropped below
them after the top inch or two of soil dries out. And this might have you
water the lawn more often, causing a damp surface most of the time.
This creates an environment that favors weeds and fungus. Howver, if
your lawn has deep roots, the top inch or so can dry out. This
discourages weeds and fungus while the lawn draws water from deeper in
the ground. So ideally you should encourage the grasses in your lawn to
be deep roots to prevent the problems later on.
How do one encourage the grass to grow deep roots? Discover
how by checking out the full article at
http://www.makeyourperfectlawntoday.info/watering-the-
lawn.html
About the Author
Leslie is passionate about gardening. Discover more tips on how you can manage your lawn and garden at http://www.makeyourperfectlawntoday.info
Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/28677.html
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