Mowing Your Lawn for Drought

A lawn repair at Lehi city hall. Repairing turf is very water
costly and should be avoided durring water restrictions
and hot periods.

With the ongoing drought in Utah I thought a little advice on preventing mowing from damaging Kentucky bluegrass is in order.

Most folks understand that drought causes stress on turf grass and many other plants. What they don't realize is that their weekly ritual of mowing and trimming can be just as damaging to their lawns. When these stresses hit a lawn it needs more water to help it recover from the damage.

So what to do to reduce lawn stress and damage? Try these tips:

• Set the mower height to 3" or more. This gives your grass more sun energy to heal and to send roots down deep to find deep water.
• Drought stressed bluegrass will grow more slowly, so it does not need to be mowed as frequently. As long as you take off one third or less of the grass leaf when mowing, it won't hurt to mow every two weeks. Mowing even less frequently may be possible.
• Keep your blade sharp. A dull blade shreds the grass and requires more water for the grass to recover. If the blade is checked every time the mower is used it never becomes a problem.
• Get a mulch mower and use the mulching feature. The small grass clippings will break down and add carbon to the soil. The carbon will help slow down evaporation so water can go to the lawn instead. Mulch mowing does not create a thatch problem, it actually helps solve it.

If this list looks familier, it should. These are the same recommendations that everyone should be familier with for creating a healthy strong lawn in normal years.

It is also never too late to look at reducing or eliminating turf!

Tips for a Green Lawn During a Drought

Lehi City hall during the 2013 drought.  In a bad year,
governments need to take the lead in conserving water!

I am not a fan of huge lawns, but that doesn't matter because they are already here and most people like them. What I hate most about lawns is the way people water them. Too often as I walk down the street I see water running over sidewalks and down gutters. This is bad enough on a normal year in the desert, but in a drought it is criminal!

Below are a few tips to get the most out of your lawn without using extra water.

• Switch from impact heads (old fashioned rainbird sprinklers) and spray nozzles to rotor heads and mini rotor nozzles. Rotors are found in nearly every hardware store, but for the minis you will need to go to a professional sprinkler shop. These shops are always glad to help you, but you may have to wait for the help.
• Fix any broken lines, heads, and nozzles. If you have leaks you are letting money run down the gutter.
• Adjust your sprinklers so that all of the water hits the lawn rather than the sidewalk or house.
• Water slow and deep, the rotors and mini rotors are made to do this. 
• On sandy soils water will move through quickly, so watering deep will take less time than on clay. On clay and loam soils you should be able to water only once a week if you can get the water deep enough.
• Get a screwdriver with an 8" blade to test how deep your water is going. Eight inches is about how far down the feeder roots for bluegrass go, so that is how far you are trying to water.
• Be willing to accept some brown spots on the lawn. Brown during a drought year is a sign of civic leadership!

Good luck, and remember, you can always plant something that uses less water than turf grass.

Water Conservation or Moneyscaping?

This an "improved" water conserving landscape.

On a study day at one of the local water conservation garden I found this great example of how you can save water in your yard. Or is it?

The above photo has this great concrete patio with a matching bench/amphitheater, a built in BBQ (off camera)

This is the "standard" water wasting yard.

It is clear that the first picture requires less water, but only because it does not have the same amount of turf. The tree and shrub selections are not that much better than those of the standard landscape. The concrete pad is not intended to gather water for any of the plants, so really, its only function for water conservation is to reduce the amount of grass.

What bothers me most is that the water conserving garden is obviously designed and a huge amount of money was spent to install it, while the normal landscape is a mockery of what a home owner might put in themselves.

People are not going to be inspired to save water if it feels like it is beyond them financially. They are not going to save water if they feel the only way to do it is to hire a designer. (Although if they do, I would like to be at the top of their list!) 

And people are not going to save water if their efforts are going to be treated as if they are stupid. This display needs to be redone with respect to the real needs instead of it being a landscape architect's resume building dream.

Time for us all to get back to the real world!

You are Killing Your Garden...

The sodium in these products makes them toxic for your garden.

About forty miles north of here is a desert where little to no life can grown and even the weeds are overcome by toxic chemicals in the soil. If you scratch the white surface of the soil you will find a black goo that binds water to the soil in such a way that the water it contains can not be used by plants or even evaporated. The most surprising thing about this desert is that hundreds of home gardeners are trying to create the same landscape in their own back yards.

The desert is the Utah Salt Flats and the chemical that makes it toxic is sodium. You if you remember high school chemistry you know that sodium is contained in table salt and baking soda. And that is where the gardens come in.

There are now many recipes for weed and bug killers that contain one or both of these common substances. Home owner's look at either of these chemicals on their kitchen shelf and say, "These are familier and don't hurt me. They must be safe for my garden." And they are right about how safe they are in the kitchen. But they were meant for the kitchen and not the garden.

So do your garden and plants a favor, if you absolutely think you need to use a chemical, use one that is made for the job. And, that will break down into something that won't kill your entire garden.

The End of Landscaping

The concept of a garden seems to be increasingly lost in America. Instead, we prefer plenty of carpet-mown grass with kidney-bean shaped tree and shrub beds plunked in the middle. We lovingly call this 'landscaping' to try and connect ourselves with the great painters of the past.


Well, at least some people stay true to the idea that a garden should be a unique endevor. And some of those are bold enough to use them for food as well!


These photos are great for stimulating design changes in next year's garden:

These folks are getting serious about food.

This resident shares food with his neighbors, they never 

complain to the city.

This wins my prize for best use of a boulevard
strip!

This garden is near my house. I look
forward to seeing the changes as the
summer progresses.

A bit of the wild look.

Food and beauty. These folks have it together!