Stress your plants

Just the other day I received a panicked phone call from a client who is vacationing in Hawaii until mid-August. It seems a very conscientious neighbor of theirs called them to let them know that a few weeks ago there was a power outage in the area and that the grass and plants were dying. To be honest I would panic too! It would appear that it isn't all that convenient to drop everything to check your irrigation system 3,000 miles away! So they called me and asked if I would take a look at the landscape and recheck the irrigation timer system. Glad to do it I said. Truth be told I'm grateful I could help.

I'm very pleased to report that the overall landscape was coming in just great. The lawn and for the most part all the plants looked great. Although there are a few areas that are a concern. The row of Nandina's that were planted don't seem to be doing so well. And one of the White Birch's of the three that were planted seems to be drooping somewhat. I suspect that over watering might actually be the culprit so I'll definitely what to keep an eye on that.

And yet this illustrates a valuable point when our automatic watering systems are set run everyday.

This system in particular was set to run twice a day for everything; the lawn, the trees and the shrubs. Specifically the system was set to water the lawn for 15 minutes in the morning, and 10 in the afternoon. Unfortunately this type of watering pattern is never as effective as we might think. In nature it never rains for just 15 minutes and never everyday (well it does depend on where one lives!). In the High Desert area of the Mojave Desert where Victorville is located we can expect, on average, roughly 6 to 8 inches of rain a year. A year! There are areas that get this much rain in just a few days! Couple that with wide temperature swings from day to night of 40 degrees or more and you can well imagine that managing the irrigation of plants can be quite challenging indeed.

The safer bet, and one that will actually promote healthy root systems of the lawn and plants by mitigating the possibly of soil fungus's and molds, would be to set the irrigation system to increase the station run times and increase the watering interval between days. For example, what I did was to increase the watering times to 20 minutes each cycle. This ensures a long enough time for the water to begin to reach the deep root zone of the lawn and the shrubs, and I turned the system completely off for Tuesday and Thursday.

This will cause the top of the root zone to dry out slightly and promote a healthy root system by forcing the roots deeper into the soil to get the "water fix" it needs. This will basically "stress" the plants a bit by causing the plant to have to "stretch out" it's root system to find adequate water. This is a good kind of plant stress. This also prevents soil "water logging" and the leaching of valuable nutrients and oxygen found in the soil.

A longer more continuous watering run time is much more effective than many short, daily bursts of water. These tend to saturate the top later of the soil but never really seem effective at reaching the deeper roots zone. Allowing the top layer of the soil to dry out somewhat will ensure that the root system will begin to grow deeper into the soil as the water level begins to reach deeper into the soil. As we get later on into the year I'll offer some additional tips that can be real money savers and integral steps to ensure a healthy and water conserving lawn.