What about you! I'm Robbie from Premier Lawns, a lawn care company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
I do a series of videos on tips and tricks, and how to take your lawn to the next level.
This is my lawn, here.
Today, I'm going to be talking about watering your lawn
Now, this year, February, we had the wettest February on record and it just never stopped raining
but whenever the rain stopped, it has hardly rained since then!
So March was pretty dry, for March. April, I believe, was the sunniest April on record.
and it's been really super dry since then, and we're coming into another two or three weeks of really nice weather,
which is good to see under "lockdown".
Today's is just a quick video on should you water your lawn, how often you should water your lawn
and how top do it to conserve water. So - stick around!
One of the main reasons for watering your lawn - apart from keeping it looking nice and green
is to keep the weed grasses out. So what are weed grasses?
the likes of Yorkshire Fog and Poa Anna or annual meadow grass as it's known
These grasses seed through the summer, and then those seeds go down into the ground.
Now, watering your lawn is a really easy way to manage them.
I'm going to be delving more into that very shortly.
So this advice isn't for somebody that's just turfed their lawn or has recently renovated their lawn and has added seed
Those types of lawn will require a lot more water than we're talking about today, but I'll be covering that in more detail,
coming up.
Annual meadow grass is a weed grass that grows in your lawn.
Now it's harder to see in this lawn, because this lawn is well fed and cared for.
But annual meadow grass is a weed grass, with shallow roots
and whenever your lawn hits drought conditions
or gets under stress it starts to go brown
and die off during June and July
and the end of May whenever your lawn's under stress, too dry,
it's currently seeding away. These seed heads here
they carry on seeding.
So your lawn
your lawn starts to go brown under drought.
and starts to go dormant, but this stuff here carries on seeding
So it seeds away, and then, whenever you start to water your lawn again
and it starts to grow again they start to grow first.
and before you know it, your lawn's full of annual meadow grass.
So that'll be my Number One reason for watering my lawn.
Now, cutting your grass during hot weather, can dehydrate it
So I'm going to show you a little tip
to try and conserve as much water in the lawn as you can.
If we're coming into drought conditions and your lawn's going to be under stress
a really good thing to do, is just to take off the grass box, or else if you have a mulching plug, it's to mulch the lawn.
Put the mower onto the highest settings , so you're just taking a small amount off the lawn.
Always check with the manual to make sure that you can use the mower safely with the box off.
So we've cut half the lawn, so over here's not cut
Over here's not cut. Still a wee bit of sand from the top dressing a couple of weeks ago
So this bit here's cut. We've just cut with the box off. There's no grass lying about.
So whenever you cut with the box off, that grass goes back in
and any moisture is in it will get back down into the lawn
and any clippings that lie on top of the lawn will actually help protect it from the sun.
So, this garden here, surrounded by trees, and this is one of the reasons why this lawn doesn't really burn up too much
because it gets all the shade, and the shade actually protects it from
a lot of the sun that we get.
Right guys. I'm going to show you a real quick tip. They call this the screwdriver test.
So push that down in. If it's hard to push down in, or if you push it down in and it comes out all dirty, then the soil needs watered.
So there's a wee bit of dirt on it, not that much.
But a lot of lawns, if the soil's really dry you'll know, because you'll find it really tough to push that down in there.
And if you do, it'll probably come out really dirty.
There's a bit of dirt on that, so we're going to give the lawn a water.
So right guys. I hear you ask, "How much water do you need to put on?" If your lawn's really brown and it hasn't had any water in a while,
then you're going to want to fill a mug.
So we have a "what about ye" Belfast mug
and we're gonna put this underneath the flow and whenever it gets up to a certain size, whenever we get a certain amount in here, then we'll know it's had enough.
Generally, a real good tip.
So we're gonna use this tin of tuna here - just stick with me - we're gonna use this tin of tuna, we're gonna use this tin of tuna
to make sure, to see how much water the lawn needs
So I'll just show you why I'm using this. You need about two inches of water, on your lawn.
There you go, Tuna Chunks!
Responsibly sourced.
We have a two inch tin
We're gonna pour the tuna out of this here, and keep it for lunch.
So we'll set the sprinkler up and we'll put this underneath the flow.
and whenever this is filled up, then it's time to move it on to the next spot
How often should you water your lawn? I recommend you water your lawn twice a week.
Real good heavy soakings, inch and a half to two inches of water,
so as the water soaks well down into the the soil.
That encourages the grass plants that you do want in the lawn to go deeper down into the soil.
So, deeper roots give the lawn a much better foundation.
It also helps starve the Poa Anna and the weed grasses of water, because
they have shallow roots and it helps kill them off.
So, this is why aeratiion is key to a healthy lawn,
because it helps those grass plants get down in
and if the soil profile's open, if you hit a dry spell
then whenever you're watering,. the water gets down into the lawn.
I know that there's a cost involved in watering your lawn. Here in Northern Ireland
our water's part of our Rates
but I know in the rest of the UK you guys have to pay for it.
So there's a website I'll put the link down in Description
Then there's a Watering Guide, you put in the size of your lawn,
you put in the size of your lawn and who supplies your water
you can work out how much it's going to cost you to water your lawn.
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Just a quick look, this tin here, nearly filled, not filled right up, but this lawn wasn't too damp
to start with so I'm just going to move the sprinkler on to some other spot.
Best time to water the lawn, if you can think of three time zones,
morning, noon , and evening
the morning time is the absolute best time to water between six o'clock in the morning and ten o'clock in the morning.
Now, I know that's not going to be suitable for everyone to water at that time.
If you can't water in the morning, I suggest you water in the evening time
But not too late.
If you water very late in the evening, then you'll encourage diseases such as Red Thread and leave them to come into your lawn.
The last time of day you should be watering, is midday, or early afternoon, because
you're going to lose a lot of the water through evaporation.
There's also a danger that that water sitting on the surface will actually scorch the grass
If you choose the right sprinkler for your lawn, for the right size of your lawn and the right shape of your lawn,
you're gonna conserve water
so it's good, there's a make that I use, that I find really good - now this isn't paid for or sponsored content in any way
Hoselock I've always found to be very good and very reliable.
This sprinkler that I used here in this video is actually for a round garden
This one here is for a square garden.
This is an oscillating one.This is the one I recommend to most of my customers to buy
but as I say it depends on your shape of lawn what one you go for. If you have a more round lawn, that one.
More preferable , if you have a square one or a rectangular one
that one's more preferable.
So guys, if you want to support me and support the channel
down below there's an affiliated link with Amazon.
Doesn't cost you anything to buy off my affiliated links on Amazon
There's a link down in description where you can buy the sprinklers that I recommend
If you buy off that link you help support my channel, and it doesn't cost you anything
So look, again, thank you for watching and I hope you've enjoyed this.
If you have any questions post them down below
and I'll try and answer them as best I can.
So - see you in the next video! Goodbye