With the new water restrictions in California, I think now is a great time to revisit the proper way to irrigate your lawn. We have some say they will be taking out their lawns due to the water restrictions, but before you do so I think it is important to take everything into consideration.

We often see every issue in society as black and white, but there is always a grey area. We all take our own individual sides of an issue, but we need to take the time to find a middle ground. Just as is the case in the political spectrum one answer isn’t always correct. Two sides need to work together to come up with a way of solving our problems. Over the next week I will be writing a two part series on how to conserve water and have a great lawn at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »

As we move through the dog days of summer in California and Arizona, now is a good time to evaluate your turfgrass lawn. The summer is the optimal time to grow warm season turfgrasses so it is important to get good growth before the end of the season. The golden rule is that all warm season grasses need to have 100 days of growing without any competition in order to maintain their health. That is 100 days without any lingering ryegrass in the way. Think back to when the ryegrass was completely out of your lawn? Was it June or did it hang around until July? If you didn’t transition it by mowing lower and verticutting then most likely you still had some ryegrass until the humidity increased and wiped it out in July. Read the rest of this entry »

Lately there have been quite a few articles and stories talking about the over consumption of water in turfgrass. As many of us know parts of California have put strict demands on water usage and one of their main targets are home lawns. Over the past few years we have seen everything from districts paying home owners to take out grass, to people putting in artificial synthetic lawns.   What we’re not seeing is a lot of information about how you can have a lawn and also conserve water. How do you know if you’re using water wisely? Today’s blog is all about tips for saving water and what you should be doing as a homeowner, landscaper, or golf course to help protect our natural resources. Read the rest of this entry »

With the rising temperatures we have quickly entered the best time of the year to plant sod. I’m sure a few of you just read the first sentence and thought that I was crazy since we’re hitting 105-110 degrees most days. Warm season turf is so well adapted to this type of weather that establishing a lawn during the summer is a simple process with the right prep work and follow up. I’m going to outline some simple cost effective steps for those looking to put in a lawn this summer.

Living in the desert we all know that water is scarce so we want to do our best to preserve it and not overuse it. One of the best water saving tips is putting in an automatic sprinkler system. Before I proceed I will tell you that I don’t recommend putting in a new lawn without one. A good sprinkler system will allow you to put out the correct amount of water in a given period of time and will help eliminate waste.

BOBSod does very well during the hot summers.

Setting up a manual sprinkler or hose is inefficient, time consuming, and most of all it is very tough to gauge the amount of water you actually put out. Before putting in an irrigation system you should by a small gauge to check your homes water pressure. Knowing how much water pressure you have will determine how many sprinklers can be on each valve. Depending on the area you will be watering you may need a couple to several valves to correctly operate your irrigation system. Most sprinkler systems are set up with a valve that controls the drip lines to the plants and then a valve for each section of the turf. A home with 1000 square feet of turf will typically have two valves to control the lawn. If you have very low water pressure you will probably need to add a third valve so less sprinklers are running at one time.

Read the rest of this entry »