How Much Water Your Grass Needs Throughout The Year
This article explains why you should adjust your watering schedule by season. Most people do not realize that grass has different irrigation needs depending on the season.
Click Here To Learn More About How To Conserve Water With An Irrigation System
Spring:
- Grass and plants need lots of water to help them grow
Summer:
- Grass and plants need even more water to sustain the growth that was put on in the spring
- They also need the water to help them stay cool
Summer To Late Fall:
- Plants and grass need less water because heat is lessening and plants are preparing to go into their winter dormancy phase.
- Unlike bears and other creatures that hibernate through the winter relying on their reserve stores to sustain life, plants do not hibernate the same way.
- Plants do not need to stock up on water in the fall. So we dial back the watering times to compensate for these needs and to save precious water resources from being wasted.
Adjust Your Watering Schedule by Season Chart:
Here is a chart that shows the relative time values as they correspond to the kind of sprinkler you are using, the month, and the minutes of run time. This is a general recommendation, so for the most accurate advice contact your local irrigation professional.
On most controllers, there will be a mode for “Seasonal Adjustment” or “Budget”. Here you can make changes to all the run times in your system at once based on a percentage. As an example, if you have a program that runs all zones for 20 minutes in the summer, you can use the Seasonal Adjustment to scale it down to 50%, or 10 minutes.
You can see the Seasonal Adjustment at the bottom of Hunter’s X-Core dial.
Hunter X-Core 6 Station Indoor/Outdoor Controller XC-600
Sprinkler Warehouse recommends the use of a smart controller that either adjusts watering times automatically based on meteorological info or can easily be adjusted using a smartphone, tablet, or web interface such as Hunter’s Hydrawise software as shown on their PHC-600I.
