As temps rise and rain becomes few and far between, it is important to manage the heat stress in your lawn properly without resorting to over watering your lawn. Not only is overwatering with your irrigation more expensive, but it can also lead to common funguses growing in the turf and creating visible disease damage to the lawn.
1. Lawns need on average 1.5" water per week during the summer season. 2. St. Augustine does best when it receives a deep watering of 0.5" at a time. This allows water to reach the root zone in the soil and encourages a deeper root growth pattern than smaller amounts of water at a higher frequency. Therefor, (3) watering events per week at 0.5" each is optimal. 3. Using a simple water gauge in your lawn while testing your sprinklers can tell you how much water they put out in a particular zone per minute. 4. Each zone should be programed to distribute 0.5" of water per cycle up to (3) times per week and watering can be skipped based on rainfall received in the trailing (7) day period. 5. Applications of Hydretain can be used to reduce the amount of water needed per week by up to 50%. 6. Summer fertilizer programs should be modified to blends that are often higher in potassium, or the third number on the bag (N-P-K), to help the lawn with stress. 7. Lastly, it's important to monitor the lawn for disease pressure, usually in the form of brown patches forming in the lawn, and have the proper herbicides applied to prevent and treat disease.
We can help you with all of this as part of our maintenance and turf care services.