I have over an acre of lawn, and I'm not wasting water on it. In all the time I've lived here, it's dried out many times before & the stuff is still here 50 years later. As far as spending hundreds of dollars on my lawn; unless you count the gas for my tractor to mow the stuff, I spend $0 on it.

I'd be just fine if it all died anyway. I'd plant clover. It stays low to the ground, is drought resistant, self maintaining, and the best part- the honey bees love it.

Yes and no complaints. Means less mowing. I have not ran our sprinklers in years. Also about an acre with 2/3 irrigated so a lot of water.

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:
It’s mind boggling. They spend hundreds of dollars for a nice lawn but won’t spend one penny on watering it.

I wouldn't water ours if we were on municipal water. It would bankrupt us.

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:
Water your lawn. Deeply and infrequently. My personal choice is about once a week for 45 minutes.

Heh. We have about 25,000 sqft. of lawn and gardens. Run time for all eight zones is 5½ hours. It runs every other day.

Shortest runtime zones are ten minutes. Those are a couple zones that are all 1.5 GPM misters, densely-covered. Longest run-time zones are 1 and 1½ hours. Those are 3 GPM rotating heads that cover large areas with a lot of sun and wind exposure.

I am in the York, PA area and the ground/grass is really dry. My yard is fairly shaded so it is not too bad yet but we really need some substantial rain.

Looks like Ireland around here

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:
It’s mind boggling. They spend hundreds of dollars for a nice lawn but won’t spend one penny on watering it.

I wouldn't water ours if we were on municipal water. It would bankrupt us.

It seems that concept is common. I wonder how much it actually costs to run a sprinkler once a week for 45 minutes during the 4 hot months.

The guy i was talking to has a 12500 sqft lawn and he really only needed to irrigate the front for curb appeal. One oscillating sprinkler and a hose is all he really needs. I wasn’t asking him to install a complicated sprinkler system (that’s a foreign concept here for some reason). It just seems to surprise some people that grass is a plant and plants need water.

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:
It’s mind boggling. They spend hundreds of dollars for a nice lawn but won’t spend one penny on watering it.

I wouldn't water ours if we were on municipal water. It would bankrupt us.

It seems that concept is common. I wonder how much it actually costs to run a sprinkler once a week for 45 minutes during the 4 hot months.

I would think it would take a good deal more than that. Even my mother's lawn, on a typical postage-stamp city lot, needed more than that during the hottest, driest months.

Our front yard is 100 ft. deep and, between the driveway and far side, about 60 feet wide. So about 6,000 sq. ft. There are six 3 gpm rotating heads in that zone. It runs an hour, every other day, to keep that lawn green. That's about 16,200 gal. (2166 cu ft) per month.

My municipality makes it difficult to figure out rates, but, near as I can tell it would cost us about $58/mo. just to run that one zone.

In any event: It must cost enough. Few around here on municipal water are watering. Even the guy across the street, who has nice grass and pays to have it fertilized, for weed control, and for aerating isn't watering his.

I put out two oscillating sprinklers on the lawn on the side of my house where it was really starting to get straw-like brown and dry and ran them 2 hours Friday morning and 2 hours Saturday morning which I estimated with a measuring cup left under them gave that section 1/2 inch of water each day. It's already looking better today on Monday, the grass was very grateful I think.

Saw this on Accuweather today and the forecast doesn't really show any rain past a stray t-storm once or twice well into mid/late June which is crazy. Seeing more of my neighbors out there now trying to water grass with a hose and at night which is all wrong.

Nope, still green and growing, with more rain on the way this week. Unfortunately. Been having to mow it weekly since early/mid-April.

Sprinklers or not, if it is grass and it is mine, it turns brown

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
I put out two oscillating sprinklers on the lawn on the side of my house where it was really starting to get straw-like brown and dry and ran them 2 hours Friday morning and 2 hours Saturday morning which I estimated with a measuring cup left under them gave that section 1/2 inch of water each day. …

That will help a lot. It takes more water to cause recovery than it does to maintain it (for a million and one reasons it seems). That’s why I start my watering plan in mid-May. Infrequent and deep watering is better than constant watering.

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:
That’s why I start my watering plan in mid-May. Infrequent and deep watering is better than constant watering.

We started ours in mid-April.

Stats:

April: First full run: 4/12. Monthly total: 19 hours.
May: Four days skipped. Monthly total: 62 hours.
June (to date): 13½ hours.

^^^ I can imagine... that's a lot of watering!

quote:

I wouldn't water ours if we were on municipal water. It would bankrupt us.

I have a hose and a sprinkler. I turned it on for the first time over the weekend.
Other than that, I've only watered flowers and tomato plants.

FINALLY some good soaking rain after a full 6 weeks of virtually not a drop.

I'm going to take Mark123's suggestion and start watering in May next year, just can't count on rain anymore I guess.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
FINALLY some good soaking rain after a full 6 weeks of virtually not a drop. ...

Were I a dancing man, I would have.

Rained all night and we’re expecting more tomorrow eve.

1.5 inches of rain Saturday night-Sunday morning. Badly needed for crops and lawns. Nice and gentle.

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:

Were I a dancing man, I would have.

Rained all night and we’re expecting more tomorrow eve.

If grass could be a person, this would be my grass right now:

In SW Wisconsin - now yes. When post started - not yet. It's trying to drizzle right now, but failing at it.

We've had 1.75 inches of rain since this morning, our first rain since 20 May.

I was just informed that SE Wyoming has had measurable precipitation (sometimes very significant amounts) for 15 days straight and 20 of the last 21 days. I don’t recall seeing 80° as yet this spring, nor is 80° or better forecasted for the next 10 days, owing I guess to the high amounts of soil moisture that keep feeding the afternoon and evening T-storms and holding temperatures down.