When should you start watering your lawn? A guide for Utahns on watering

SALT LAKE CITY  – As we approach a week of 80-degree temperatures, you may be tempted to turn those sprinklers on; depending on where you live, you may not need to.

The Utah Division of Water Resources has set up a Weekly Lawn Watering Guide to provide instruction to residents about how often their lawns actually need water. With record snowpack this season, many may be thinking there’s plenty of water to go around. However, experts explain why that’s not necessarily the case.

“This snowpack has been fantastic but the reality is, it’s not the norm and so we want to use it as wisely as we can,” Candace Schaible, a Water Conservation Coordinator with the Division of Natural Resources said. “The other reality is that we live in the desert. Our annual precipitation, if we’re lucky, only gives about a third of what our lawn needs from a water standpoint. Just based on our climate we’re always going to need to irrigate the lawn. ”

The Weekly Lawn Watering Guide

The guide is designed to help residents avoid overwatering their lawns and conserve the state’s limited water resources.

According to a release from the Utah Division of Water Resources, the guide provides customized weekly recommendations based on local weather conditions and other factors that impact water usage.

“The water need of a plant is determined by a lot of different factors and they’re all weather-related,” Schaible said. “We call it ‘ET’ for evapotranspiration. There are weather stations across the state that calculate that water loss for us, so we’ll pull all the weather station data each Friday. We’ll look at what the water loss was from lawns the previous week and then we also look at the forecasted data and just see what the temperatures are going to be.”

This data is what water conservationists use to determine how much water your lawn needs. The guide is updated weekly.

An additional guide has been added for those with low-water-use lawn varieties with recommendations specifically for those varieties.

“Utah will continue to be one of the driest states in the country and water conservation remains critical to our long-term sustainability. The Weekly Lawn Watering Guide and Low Water Use Guide are essential tools for residents to make informed decisions about their lawn watering habits and ultimately help conserve our precious water resources,” Shelby Ericksen, a water conservation manager for the Utah Division of Water Resources said.

Testing your soil moisture

Schaible explained the best way to know if you should water is by testing the soil itself.

“Just doing some simple tests in the landscape to see where your soil moisture is, is a really good indicator of when it’s time to turn on the water,” Schaible said.

There are a few ways to do that, using a screwdriver to poke the ground, you can gauge how soft the soil is.

“If the screwdriver slides in easily, your soil moisture is good, but if you have a harder time getting it in, then you need to start watering,” Schaible said.

They also make soil moisture probes that you can put into the ground and pull up a core of soil. Schaible said with these probes you can see and feel how much moisture there is.

Another simple test method is to walk across the grass.

Grass that is overwatered will lay flat, staying flattened behind you while normal grass will spring back into place.

When to water this summer

Your lawn’s need for water obviously evolves as temperatures and weather change. So how should you alter your watering throughout the summer?

“It’s almost like a bell curve, so we start out pretty low and then we gradually increase and when we hit the peak it’s about three times a week, and then it slowly fades out from there again,” Schaible said. “So typically like end of June /July we’re at three days a week, and then as August comes and the temperatures cool down a bit and the days get a little shorter we cut back to two. Then in September and October we cut to one.”

At the height of  summer, Schaible said lawns shouldn’t need to be watered more than three times per week.

“Three is typically the max. You might have some places in St. George that on occasion need a little bit more, but statewide, three is plenty,” she said.

Now for those interested in conserving more water, you don’t have to keep your lawn green.

“Lawns are really tough…they do go dormant during the heat of the summer. Most folks have cool season grasses in their landscape meaning they do really well when the temperatures are cool and when it heats up they get a little shock and want to go dormant,” Schaible said. “So at that point in time when it’s hot, like in June and July, you can cut your watering back to once a week or once every ten days, just giving it enough to keep the root system alive. And when that top browns out, it doesn’t mean your lawn is dead, it’s just going dormant. Then when those monsoons roll through in the fall and the temperatures cool down a bit, they green right back up.”

For other recommendations on how to conserve water in Utah, such as fixing leaky faucets, taking advantage of statewide rebates, and checking other landscape conversion incentives, visit UtahWaterSavers.com.

“We know that many residents may not be aware of the amount of water they use on their lawns or the long-term impact it can have on our water resources,” Ericksen said. “By providing easy-to-use recommendations, we hope to empower residents to make a positive difference in water conservation efforts and the overall resource resiliency in our state.”