The Drought Part 3

By Cindy Poore

I was recently blessed to hear Nick Schnieder from the Mojave Water Agency speak about “Putting your lawn on Life Support.” A very good talk.

The drought is causing us to do things we might not do if we had more choices. Nick spoke of a few ways to help your lawn through this stressful drought.

#1 best and easiest tip is to cut your lawn higher.

I think most of you have heard me speak about grass cycling and proper lawn maintenance for the different seasons. Cutting your lawn higher during stress conditions was always in the picture, it is just so much more important now.

Longer grass has more moisture reserve to keep the core grass plant alive in drought situations. Longer grass also shades the soil around the grass better, conserving soil moisture allowing your grass to get by with less. A small step that can mean a lot.

#2 Spread your watering out with shorter, more frequent watering. Some call it Cycle and Soak.

Normally I would want to have as many days between watering to encourage your grass roots to search for water training them to be deeper rooted and less susceptible to weather and top of soil conditions. Most cities have limited the days you can water. So the limited days to water lawns is actually a good long term plan. The problem is, most of our lawns have not been “trained” before the watering limits were fobbed upon us.

The best way to live with the 10 minute per station limit such as Apple Valley has imposed is to divide up the 10 minutes in half and water  near the beginning of your allotted days and at the end of the allotted day so that you in effect get 6 days of (albeit limited) water instead of 3. So if for example one of your days is Wednesday, water for 5 minutes at 3 am and for 5 minutes at 11pm.  The 3 am watering will help your Wednesday grass and the 11 pm will help your Thursday grass. If you do not have the 10 minute limit, then there is no reason you can’t keep you lawn going.

#3 It’s going to look different.  Understand that things will look and act different than you are used to or would like. Your grass will maybe get a little thin. It will definitely not be as green. Remember, we are talking about surviving and not necessarily thriving.

Hang in there, it is not forever. But maybe this is a good time to re-evaluate what really is important to you in the long run to see if more permanent changes are needed. Be smart with your watering and remember, together we are better!

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“Sometimes we are tested, not to show our weaknesses, but to discover our strengths”            Anonymous

September is a pretty good month!

One of my favorite months because it’s my birthday month, but also because traditionally the month school started when I was a kid.  I loved school because it came with a new box of crayons and tablet! And still do love to learn every chance I get.

I love to find new ways to create lovely garden settings for my clients. Clients will ask for something in particular that is important to them and I will try to craft a landscape around those needs and desires. It makes for a lot of variety in our landscapes.  Ponds and waterfalls, contemplation gardens, medicine wheels, bocce ball courts, memory gardens, and tropical paradise are all requests that we have crafted into local landscapes.  In every single landscape I learned something new from my clients. It is a very collaborative effort and tons of fun.

September is a great month for maintaining status quo. Not quite ready for fall cleanups, but the days are getting a little shorter. Now they just have to get a bit cooler and we will all save more water as the plants will need less then.

Loving the Designs!
I’m working on lots of different design and landscape projects at the moment and the theme for a few of them seem to be clean, simple lines. I was looking for a built-in bench that would be simple enough for the homeowner to put together. I found this bench online and can’t wait to try it! It would look great with a dark oil stain.
The predictions are for a lot of rain this winter. It has it pros and cons, but perhaps we should all think about getting ready. Look over your yard for potential drainage issues, plumbing to protect from freezing and perhaps store up some sand bags. Just in case.