Late Spring Lawn Care – Why Having a Sprinkler System Will Make Your Life Easier

With summer on its way, it’s important to have a good June lawn care regime, which can heavily include keeping your lawn well-watered, and you can’t just depend on the rain for that. Here’s what you should be doing and looking for before summer arrives:

Look for Lawn Damage
Early spring can bring disease and insects which can damage your lawn, so June is the time to try and repair this damage.

Diseases and Fertilizer
Leaf spot is a disease which will start to show often if it was a damp early spring, followed by bouts of hot temperatures and humid air. It starts with some small dark spots on individual leaves, but as it spreads will turn the grass almost to straw, like it hasn’t had enough water. This can be remedied by not cutting your grass too short (never less than 3”) and adding fertilizer.

Giving your lawn a boost of light fertilizer helps with leaf spot, but will also give your entire lawn a boost of nutrients. After applying, the fertilizer needs watering to get it off the grass, and into the soil, but you don’t want to over-water, washing away your hard work. Having an in-ground irrigation system will allow you all at once to give your entire lawn the right amount of water, just by setting a timer.

Insects and Over-Seeding
Lawn damage from insects can come in two forms – brown patches caused by the grubs eating away at the roots or animals digging up your lawn looking to eat the grubs. Either way, in order to remedy this, you will need to over-seed.

Overseeding involves adding some new topsoil or compost to the areas needing seed, then heavily distributing new seed, then watering. Here is where an in-ground sprinkler system is so useful. New grass seed needs to be kept wet until it sprouts, which can be anywhere from 5-7 days. Since you don’t have the time to constantly monitor new seed, you can set a timer on the irrigation system so that it will water the seed for the correct amount of time, keeping it wet so it will grow.

Good Watering Practices
Most home owners who don’t have a sprinkler system will often water improperly, either because they don’t have enough time, or worry about wasting money. Lawns should be given 1-1.5” of water once a week. With a regular sprinkler, you can only water one area of lawn at a time, so it’s likely that after an hour and a half in one spot, you’ll have to go out and move it to another. Depending on the size of your yard and how much finagling is involved with adjusting the sprinkler so you’re not watering the fence and sidewalk, it could be an entire day’s job.

Because lawns need lots of water to grow healthy and lush, but also after fertilizing and overseeding, an in-ground sprinkler system will be a great investment saving you both time and money.