Commercial Irrigation

Lawns and large expanses of grass ie. golf courses and city parks need sunlight and good soil or earth to flourish – however just as importantly a lawn also needs water. Now we have established the easy basic givens.  Now you need to check the type of grass you are cultivating on your lawn, your soil type and also your climate – ie where you are in the country geographically. We all know that some areas of the UK have a higher average rainfall than others. Now you are being to understand your lawn you can now think about how to irrigate it and keep it in tip top condition.

How much water should you give your lawn – well this is going to depend on your weather conditions – but assuming we are having a rare dry spell and your grass is starting turn that dull grey / silvery green colour then you should be watering each day. There is little point just giving the lawn a little drink – what we are looking for is a good soaking.

I strongly suggest watering in the early morning – this ensures that the evaporation is minimal and also watering in the evening has been shown to produce higher disease potential. Watering in the morning also has an additional benefit, the water pressure is normally at its highest – have you tried watering at 6pm in the evening……..

Please stay off your lawn immediately after irrigating – give it a chance for a rest before you allow the kids or golfers to play. A little trick to knowing whether you have watered enough – stick a screwdriver into the lawn and it should slip in with ease. On average you are looking to irrigate your grass with approx 1 inch of water at a time.

Rain water is the ideal choice for irrigating your lawn – its free, so therefore extremely economical and you are also doing your bit for the planet and saving our natural resources. We will look at rain water harvesting in greater detail in a future article.

There are quite a few ways to irrigate lawns, golf courses and parkland etc. Needless to say standing there with your hose is going to take a long long long time and is not going to give you an even watering spread.  

I would recommend sprinklers at the very least – you can either have one sprinkler that you constantly move after watering a small area or a system of interconnected sprinklers giving you an even watering spread all in one go.  Also how many commercial garden designers have been back and seen their hard work not flourishing as the watering has not been a top priority.

Alternatively the most efficient way would be to use pop up irrigation water sprinklers using a water timer.  You can programme the automatic water time to come on when you want it.  The pop up sprinklers water your large area at the flick of a pre programmed switch. We will look at Automatic Watering Systems in a future article.