Copyright © 2010 Turner Turf Farms Corp. Privacy Policy.
A well designed and maintained sprinkler system will save water. Once a week walk through your sprinkler system while its watering to make sure its watering your lawn, and not your sidewalk or driveway.
Watering
- After establishing turf with the special watering during the first two weeks, it is now time to transition to a normal watering schedule.
- Water Deeply and Less Often. Let your lawn dry down a little (not dry out) between each water application. Doing this forces the roots to grow deeper into the soil for water. Ideally one month after installing turf you should be able to water every two days. Depending on your soil depth, you may be able to water every three days after the first year during the hottest summer months.
- Automatic timers have a cycle feature that can convert a single 15 minutes of watering
into three 5-
minute watering's over several hours, which can save water if you have a water runoff problem.
- An automatic sprinkler system ISN’T “set it and forget it.” Another feature of sprinkler controllers is the “Water Budget” which makes it simple to apply more or less water as the weather changes. Adjusting the Water Budget from 100% to 70% will apply 30% less water across all sprinkler stations. Adjusting the Water Budget feature from 100% to 110% will apply 10% more water across all stations.
- Lawns require 6-
8 lbs of Nitrogen per 1000 square feet each year over three applications:
2 lbs of nitrogen applied in early spring
2 lbs of nitrogen in late spring/early summer
2 lbs of nitrogen in early fall
- Every bag of Fertilizer has three numbers on it; the first number is the percentage (by weight) of nitrogen, the second number is the amount of phosphorous, and the third number is potassium.
- Nitrogen promotes leaf growth. Phosphorous promotes root growth. Potassium promotes disease resistance.
- Fertilizers can also contain iron (makes your lawn greener) and micro-
nutrients which plants use in small quantities, these are listed on the label.
- Iron will stain concrete driveways and sidewalks. After applying a fertilizer containing iron, sweep any excess back onto lawn before watering.
- One 50 pound bag of 15-
15- 15 fertilizer has:
7.5 lbs of Nitrogen (50 lbs x 15% = 7.5 lbs)
7.5 lbs of Phosphorous
7.5 lbs of Potassium
2.0 lbs of Iron
- A 50 pound bag of 15-
15- 15 fertilizer, applied in THREE DIFFERENT applications in a ONE YEAR time period is about the perfect amount of fertilizer for a 1000 square feet lawn.
- Apply IRONITE during the hot summer months (nitrogen combined with heat and humidity will encourage fungus formation when it’s hot).
FERTILIZING
We recommend fertilizers that have numbers in the 10-20 range.
Examples include 15-15-15, 16-16-8, 9-9-9, 16-20-0.
Water running down the gutter is water you pay for that isn’t watering your lawn.