The best time of day to water your lawn

What is the best time of day to water the lawn? This is a very common question that almost everyone with a lawn wants to know. I have heard and seen many practices regarding this topic, and I have come to the conclusion that many people are wrong. Even people who have done their research and combine their research with their common sense are often wrong.

Your lawn needs about an inch of water per week. Too much or too little water is not healthy for your lawn. The best way to achieve this is with a really thorough soak at the right time. Watering every day a little, or walking around your lawn spraying your hose every day may actually spray your lawn the required inch per week, but your lawn still probably won’t get the required inch per week. This explains why daily watering does not make sense. Your lawn doesn’t require that much water anyway. Watering your lawn a full inch every day will only be detrimental to your lawn, and misting it every day a little bit is pointless as it will just evaporate when the sun comes up.

The best time of day to water your lawn is around three or four in the morning, when the water pressure is highest. In this way you will achieve two vital things:

1. The water will have a chance to penetrate far enough into the topsoil.

2. Any remaining water will evaporate when the sun rises, so you won’t give the water a chance to create fungus or mold that occurs when water sits on the surface of your lawn.

If you have an automatic sprinkler system, it’s very easy to set it at the right time for the right amount of water. However, if you have a job that allows you to sleep at night, waking up at half past three in the morning to water the lawn may not be the best way to keep that job. I certainly would never consider getting up this early in the morning to water my lawn.

The next best thing that will still achieve these two vital effects is watering your lawn as early as possible in the morning BEFORE THE SUN RISES. This way, most of the water will still soak into the topsoil, and any water left behind will evaporate as soon as the sun comes out and starts to heat things up. This time of the morning can also be very challenging, as most of us need to get ready for work, eat breakfast, carpool, or do one of the million other things we all need to do in the morning hours.

If watering your lawn in the early morning hours is not possible, the next best time of day to water your lawn is in the evening after the sun has already cooled significantly. This will allow the water to properly penetrate the top layer of soil. However, the leftover water will stay overnight until the sun comes up and evaporates it. This can cause various fungi and mold to grow on your lawn, but it’s still better than nothing.

The worst time of day to water your lawn is in the afternoon, when the sun is beating down with full force. The water will evaporate almost as quickly as it hits your lawn, making this watering completely useless. I see automatic sprinklers on all the time in the middle of the day, but let me assure you this does not accomplish anything unless the sprinklers stay on for hours at a time. Watering your lawn in the afternoon in such a way as to provide a large amount of water to soak up the topsoil requires much more time and water than watering early in the morning and is therefore almost always completely useless. For this very reason, walking around with a hose and spraying your lawn is also basically useless, as your lawn won’t get even the inch of water it needs. Instead, the water will evaporate almost instantly.

The best way to find out if your lawn is getting the required inch per week is to place a few empty cans next to your garden or lawn and see if an inch of water fills up. If you have a sprinkler system, this is a good way to see how long it takes for the sprinklers to drench your lawn with an inch of water. The time it takes to fill the cans with one inch of water is a good indicator of how long it takes to drench the grass with one inch of water.

Visit http://www.1800topsoil.com for more articles and resources on gardening and topsoil and to use our topsoil calculator.