Tuesday, September 6, 2016

How To Water Your Yard In The Heat and Drought of Late Summer When It Hasn't Really Been Hot or Dry!!

Here is our August Master Gardener article for the Ruston Daily Leader:


Forget Porgy and Bess, the words from the song Summertime by George Gershwin must have actually been written for gardeners experiencing an August with unexpected rainfall. The living really has been easy! It is such a treat to lazily linger over my morning coffee rather than rush into the yard to haul and position water hoses to administer desperately needed moisture for dying plants and trees.  If not for  two negative consequences, this wet gardening situation would be heavenly -  the devastating flooding of our south Louisiana friends, and the North Central Louisiana Master Gardeners’ decision for today’s topic to be… Watering in the Drought Conditions of Late Summer.  Hmmmm….

I considered changing topics, but decided to adopt a Zig Ziglar approach: “Expect the best, prepare for the worst.”  Let’s hope we continue to get regular rain showers through October, but let’s prepare to return to normal hot, dry late-summer conditions. Here are a few practical watering tips to keep in mind:

1. Only water when it is needed. Use a rain gauge.  You can buy rain gauges in most garden centers or find directions online for making one from a 2 liter bottle. The optimum amount of rainfall is 1 inch per week. Record your rainfall amounts on your calendar so you can keep up with it. Another way to determine if it is time to water is sticking a screwdriver into the soil. If it easily goes down about six inches, you don’t need to water. Don’t be afraid to turn your sprinkler system off!!! Leaving your sprinkler on when you have been getting plenty of rain (or worse, when it IS raining) is like leaving your car blinkers on after your have completed a turn. Seriously, people are judging you!

2. Water at the correct time. Run sprinklers early in the morning. Watering at noon is a waste due to evaporation, while watering at night promotes fungi and other diseases.  Set your sprinkler timers for 4:00-7:00 a.m.  This will give the water time to soak in before the sun comes up, yet keep the foliage from remaining wet too long. Running sprinklers in the heat of the day or after dusk is a sure sign that you didn’t pay attention to your elementary science lessons about evaporation and fungus. Seriously, people are judging you!

3. Know how much you’re watering. Measure your sprinkler’s output.  Set tuna cans or other straight sided containers in several different spots covered by your sprinkler. Determine how long it takes to put out an inch of water. Shallow, frequent watering is detrimental to your plants and grass because it encourages shallow roots. Weekly, deep watering is your goal. But don’t overwater! Overwatering promotes weed growth and diseases. If your summer water bills are $500, not only are you overwatering, but you may be single-handedly sucking the Sparta Aquifer dry!! And people are judging you!

4. Group bedding plants according to their watering needs. All plants are not created equal when it comes to water requirements! Verbena, salvia, and rosemary need less water than cannas, elephant ears, and spiderwort. If these plants are mixed together in one flower bed, it is not going to end well. Keep that in mind when planning your landscape. But even Master Gardeners forget this when lured by fabulous color combinations, so we’ll give you a pass on this one. No one will judge you!

5. Random watering thoughts. Here are some final thoughts on watering that didn’t fit into the above categories but are still worth mentioning.  When watering a tree, be sure you are watering out around the drip line, the area directly beneath the edge of the tree’s limbs.  Grass goes dormant when affected by drought and will bounce back to life with the next rain; don’t panic. Try not to wet a plant’s leaves when watering; this promotes so many diseases.  And last, invest in drip hoses; they are much better than overhead watering.

Well, who knows what the next two months may bring! We still have rain in the forecast so we will hope for the best, but we may be glad we’ve prepared for the worst.






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