By following these tips for low-maintenance greenery, you can spend less time with a hose and more time relaxing and enjoying your lawn and garden
1. Choose plants that match your landscape. Even on a quarter-acre lot, you'll have a variety of soil, shade, and sun conditions. If your garden is in a sunny area, choose plants that can handle some drought. Plants requiring more water should grow closer to your house. A plant that thrives best in the shade will need much more water if it's placed in the sun.
2, Minimize your lawn area. Your lawn requires the most water and maintenence than anything else growing on your property. Incorporating gravel and stone paths over large areas of the lawn enables you to spend more time making the smaller plot of lawn grass look great.
3 Proper watering. Water lawns about one inch, once per week to avoid over-watering which can wash essential nutrients from the soil, cause shallow root growth and increase runoff of sediment and pollutants to waterways or storm drains. Place a tuna can on the lawn when watering to measure one inch of water. For most efficient water use, water lawns in the early morning or late evening to avoid excessive evaporation. A handy way to measure one inch of watering.
4. Grass length. Keep grass one to three inches long. Grass this length shades the roots, requires less water and mowing, and allows the root system to become deeper and more efficient in water storage.
5. Use glazed pots for your container gardens. Container gardens can be water hogs, but glazed pottery loses less water to evaporation than unglazed pots. Molded fiberglass pots with built-in drip pans are even better water savers. Garden pros often add a small handful of water-saving gel crystals, which swell up when wet then slowly release moisture.
6. Use mulch liberally. We suggest using 3 inches of fine-grained mulch (not the big, chunky stuff) to help conserve water in the garden. It helps prevent weeds and quick evaporation and will absorb water from those lovely summer showers. Remember to let mulch layers decompose before adding new mulch.
7. Replace sprinklers with soaker hoses. Shooting water all over the place instead of hitting the spot is a common mistake. Water that could be used to nourish the soil instead just ends up on the leaves. This leads to dry soil and encourages plant diseases. Misting sprinklers are particularly inefficient at getting water in the soil. Put water where it's needed and curtail evaporation with a soaker hose. Once you've placed the hose, watering is as simple as turning on the spigot. If you aren't moving your soaker hose, bury it under mulch to speed water to root areas. The Uniform Plumbing code states that soaker hoses cannot be connected to hose bibs for more that 12 hours. An inexpensive quick-disconnect makes it easy to release soaker hoses after watering.
8. Start with good soil. Good soil saves water. The final step for conserving water is to work with your soil before planting. Adding organic matter, such as compost, lends nutrients and structure to the soil, increasing its water-holding capability. Plants and grass should be fertilized only as needed. Over-fertilizing causes excessive growth, leading to weak and thirsty plants. Most landscape plants require fertilization only twice each
year.
