Thursday, July 17, 2008

Since I am so depressed about the state of my lawn and it's massive burn spots I decided to look at the weather and see when it last rained. The last day the SLC airport received rain was on June 11th, or 37 days ago. And it only rained .03 inches that day. The average daily high temp has been 93.54 degrees with 18 of those days being 95 degrees or higher!

The Utah Division of Water states that 65% of Utah's water goes toward watering lawns! And as much as 50% of that is lost through evaporation. Now at least I know enough to water in the early morning and overnight when there is no sun beating down so intensely, but I'm still not having much luck. They also state that you need 1/2 inch of water applied per irrigation, and they suggest watering once every 3 days in June, July, and August. I have these massive dead spots and I water every day twice a day....Hmmmm.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

two thoughts... 1. How deep are your grass roots. Most likely they are only a couple inches deeps which means as soon as the surface water drys up the grass dries up. So you need to get the grass to grow deeper roots and to do that you need to loosen up the soil. The standard advice is to kill it all and then double dig and replant. which in my opinion is way too much work and questionable whether it would really help. Another option is to aerate but of course it only areated the first couple inches which also wont help. I would suggest using a pich fork or broad fork to loosen the soil down as deep as the tines will go. Just shove it in and rock back and forth. then move on to option two.

2. Overseed with drought resistant grass seed. Eventually it will outcompete the water loving stuff and you will be able water significantly less.

or of course my favorite option. Rip it all up and plant food or native plants.

Unknown said...

Option 3:
Move to Colorado...

Unknown said...

chris this has absolutely nothing to do with grass. but it is hilarious http://www.drhorrible.com/

Chris said...

I love Dr. Horrible! I can't wait till act III comes out. Thanks for sharing it really made my day!!!!