Good morning bloggers,
Here is a picture from Independence, MO yesterday, taken by Christine Dearing. She says "It took just 15 minutes or so for the flood waters to come up our driveway to the garage door, cover a good portion of our grass in the front yard and placed our walkway to the front door under water".
The rainfall rates were close to 4 inches per hour, and if this would have continued for even just one more half hour there would have been a significant flash flood yesterday. So, Independence had the heavy rain. A few of us had over 2 inches yesterday, and many had only around 1/4 inch. How is your lawn doing?
Jeff Hamons, Hamons Landscaping, wrote this blog entry for today, discussing our watering needs for lawn and landscape.
Kansas City's Lawns and Landscapes can be dealt a tough blow by our local weather. Mild spring with ample rainfall can quickly turn into scorching summers with little precipitation. This is tough on our grass and on our plants, even though it hasn't dried out yet, we have to pay close attention to the weather pattern that Gary Lezak and the NBC Action Weather Teamn will continue to discuss on NBC Action News and this weather blog. The lawns and gardens that missed yesterday's heavy rain may need some watering soon.
Irrigating your lawn and landscape properly in July and August is imperative to growing healthy plants. In general terms, you want to apply one and a half inches of water three times per week to supplement Mother Nature. This is best done with one or two slow watering cycles.
For purposes of this post I am going to give very general guidelines. For more detailed information you may visit my website at http://www.hamonslandscaping.com/wordpress/
Automatic Irrigation Systems:
I like to water two days back to back and then a third day later in the week. Typically I set my customers irrigation systems to water on Monday and Tuesday and then again on Friday. This gives a good balance between watering deeply and also ensuring the lawn never stresses out too much from lack of water even during very HOT weather.
Ideally you would measure the output of each of your irrigation zones so that you can apply between ½" and ¾ inch per cycle. I have directions to do this on my blog. However, some general guidelines are to set your zones with spray heads(the ones that pop up but do not move) for 20 minutes and set your zones with rotors (the ones that pop up and sweep back and forth) for 60 minutes. Do this according to the schedule above and your lawns and landscaping will be very happy.
Manual Sprinklers
If you have to drag a hose around the yard to water your grass then your watering is not quite as automatic – but it is equally important. Hose sprinklers water much more slowly. This is a benefit because you can water less often – but for longer amounts of time. The most common type of sprinkler is the impact sprinkler. This puts out about 1/3 an inch of water per hour. So… I usually suggest that you arrange the sprinkler in the middle of the irrigated area and let it run for 2 hours before you move it to a new area. Do this twice a week or as a supplement to any irrigation the weather provides and your lawn and landscaping should be very happy.
If you have any question to your situation specifically feel free to ask in the comments below and I would be happy to answer them.
Jeff Hamons
So, the above comments are from Jeff Hamons. The weather pattern hasn't even come close to showing signs of any prolonged dry and hot pattern. I do have some concerns for the end of this month, and we will talk about it later today in our next blog entry.
The NBC Action News set has been taken out. It is a mess in the studio, and we are about to begin construction of our new set, which we will debut in August. Our weather team is inside this construction zone. It isn't easy, but we are excited about how it will look in a few weeks.
Have a great day.
Gary