(gentle acoustic music) - Hi, I'm Erik with Landscape Garden Centers and today we're gonna talk about watering your plants and your lawn.

Some things to consider, especially when we're going through a drought, is how much water and when to water your plants.

Discussing with plants that are already in the ground, it's maybe a good idea to at least water them thoroughly once a month, or once every two weeks, depending on your soil conditions and depending on how long we've been going without any rain or any water.

When you're watering, the best thing to do is water thoroughly.

And when we say thoroughly, that means you really put a lot of water down over a longer period of time and just have it slowly soak into the ground.

Doing that really helps so we don't lose any of the water, and then actually having a hose that just is trickling around your trees, your shrubs, your perennials, is the best thing 'cause then that water just really soaks into the ground and then provides that plant enough moisture in order for it to survive through a drought.

When you have your annuals that are in pots and containers, those types of plants or things that are in containers off the ground are gonna be drying out quickly and they're going to have to be watered almost daily and in some cases, twice daily, but the same application applies.

And it helps when the soil in those containers is down below the edge of the pot or the container because then that way it can hold a considerable amount of water into the container as you're watering and then you can turn off the water and let it cycle through or soak into the container and then water again.

Plants that are above ground also need to be, not be in full sun or asphalt all the time because that asphalt really will increase the temperature, the root temperature where it'll actually stunt the plants, basically stop growing and just basically work on surviving and then gradually just desiccate and dry, no matter how much water you're putting into them.

So that's just something to consider.

So getting back to the plants at your house, most people have an irrigation system or a sprinkler system.

Irrigation systems are great to water, but you want to basically do the same thing.

You wanna water for a long period of time so the water sits there and it's soaks into the ground.

You don't wanna water for five minutes, then turn it off, and then the next day water because what you're doing is you're just, you're barely touching the surface of that soil and it does not get down to the root system.

So one thing to do is we call it cycle and soak.

You can irrigate your lawn or water your lawn with a sprinkler, but in some like we've been experiencing such windy conditions, sprinklers aren't really very efficient, so we lose efficiencies when we throw water into the air because when it's windy, it desiccates, it dries up instantly and never reaches what our goal is, which is the root system.

So in some cases it's actually even better just to take the hose and let the hose trickle on the lawn or a dry area and let it soak in and then move the hose.

A little bit more time consuming, but it does work well.

So that's something to consider.

The other thing is on your lawn, typically people want to mow on a weekly basis.

Maybe stretch that out and go every 10 to 14 days and let that lawn grow up as high as you possibly can so that way the next time you mow, you're just barely clipping off the very top of the grass blades.

If you cut too short, that grass is gonna require more moisture, more water, and then also you're allowing the sun to get all the way down to the base of the roots, which then dries out the ground.

You keep that grass taller, that grass taller will actually shade itself, keep the ground cooler and then the grass will continue to grow.

So watering, when can watering take place?

You water when you can water.

If you're not around in the morning to water, don't worry about it, but at least get some water.

The best time to water is in the morning, not in the evening.

When you water in the evening, things stay wet longer, and then you have the chance for more diseases to pop up, so that is something to consider.

If you can water in the morning and the early parts of the day, that would be the best.

But again, sometimes you just have to water because you have no other time to water but the evening, but just try to make sure that everything can dry out enough and then watch out for pest and diseases after that.

I'm Erik with Landscape Garden Centers.

Keep it growing.

(gentle acoustic music)