Come summer and all you want is to walk on a lush lawn and enjoy a cool summer breeze! Sounds like a dream come true, provided your lawn has the perfect grass bed. But that can’t happen unless you follow a lawn care routine, especially a lawn watering schedule for the warm months!

Watering your lawn seems like a simple task. But, for many of us, when and how to water can be confusing! Here are our 6 facts on watering the lawn in summer for growing a resilient turf with a strong root system.

How healthy is your lawn?

Yes, that’s a question you should be asking before you start a summer routine, especially if you had a rough winter. If the grass looks dull green or appears to have a grayish cast, it’s telling you that it needs water. It’s time to follow the recommended watering schedule by the turf specialists.

Best time of the day to water lawn

Lately, we’ve been getting a lot of calls from our friends in the Quad Cities (areas in Davenport, Bettendorf, Rock Island, and Moline) asking about summer water regime. Questions were asked about when and how to water the lawns.

We recommend watering your lawns in the early morning, preferably between 4 and 10 am. Evaporation happens less during cooler temperatures.

If you miss the mornings, your next best time is in the late afternoon. Don’t wait till night for watering your lawns in the summer. Lawns that are kept wet overnight often become a breeding ground for fungus.

Overwatering the lawns or less water?

How often should you water lawns in summer? It’s summer and they’re worried that all that heat will make the grass dry. They ask us if a daily 15-minute water routine is enough.

You’ll actually be overwatering your lawns if you water your turf every day. Grass needs about an inch of water every day to survive. You can easily span out your lawn watering schedule to every 3 to 7 days. If the days become hotter, you can extend your lawn watering schedule.

This routine also depends on the soil type of your turf.

• For clay soils, watering once a week is enough
• For sandy soils, watering three times a week is sufficient

How do you know if the grass has got enough water?

Here are 3 ways to tell if your lawn watering schedule is working:

• During your first watering, check the soil every 15 minutes to find out how long it takes for the soil to get soaked. Do the screwdriver test as discussed before! Note the time; that’s how long it’ll take in the future for the soil to absorb water.
• Place clean empty tuna cans around the lawn and see how much time your lawn sprinkler takes to fill each can with an inch of water. The time will vary, so just calculate the average time. That’s about how long you should water your lawn.

• Those with a sprinkler system can find out the flow rate from the manufacturer. To fill up each square foot of the lawn with an inch of water, you’ll need 0.62 gallons.
  Do some math; multiply 0.62 with the total square foot of your lawn. Divide the number by the flow rate. You will get a rough estimate of the time you need to run the sprinkler.

Make a good choice on sprinklers

Ground sprinklers with pop up heads are the best for watering your lawns. There’s a timer which runs the sprinkler at preset times and delivers precise amounts of water.

If you don’t have a ground irrigation system, use a revolving or pulsating sprinkler attached to a garden hose. The pulsating sprinklers spread water horizontally at a higher velocity. It’s not susceptible to strong winds and evaporation as the oscillating type is.

Know your grass before watering the lawns

If it’s a newly seeded lawn, the key is to keep the top inch of the soil constantly moist. You can’t just rely on Mother Nature alone; you need to do your bit with a proper irrigation system.

• Warm-season grass requires less water than cool-season grass. Grasses like St. Augustine, zoysia, centipede, and Bermuda have deep root systems, which help them survive in drought conditions. Both temperature and soil type determine the amount of water required for warm-season grass.
• Cool-season grass like fescue has good drought tolerance. It develops a deep root system to absorb moisture from the soil.

As we come to the end of this post, you now have a manual for watering the lawns in summer. As lawn care experts in Quad Cities (Davenport, Bettendorf, Rock Island, Moline), we can sum up these practices in one line “water deeply and less frequently”. You’ll quickly realize that many of your grass problems have been solved.