Watering sloping lawns can be a real problem for many lawn owners in many regions of Australia. The issue faced most often in these scenarios is when during lawn watering we find that the water is running off the lawn and directly into the street. This watering problem is further exacerbated in regions with very poor soil quality whereby the soil is naturally hydrophobic and repels more water off the lawn than it does absorb it.
Adjust Watering Method To Water Sloping Lawns Efficiently
Staggered watering is the very first step we can utilise to help stop water runoff when watering sloping lawns.
With this method we would water our sloping lawn for perhaps five or ten minutes, then we would turn off the watering for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes or longer if we wanted.
We then water the lawn again for another five or ten minutes.
Then we stop the watering for another break, again.
We repeat this staggered lawn watering as required for the needs of our own lawn.
For example, if we wanted to water our lawn for thirty minutes total, we would water for ten minutes three times, with a break of perhaps ten minutes in between those times.
An automatic reticulated lawn watering system should be able to handle this schedule. However is we are hand watering with sprinklers then it is obviously not ideal, and perhaps in such situations we can limit these staggered lawn waterings to only the Summer months and also perhaps only on the weekends to make things a little easier for us.
All lawns and their soils will be different, as will be the degree of slope of the lawn. Therefore don’t just follow the sample I provided as it may not be most suitable for your own lawn. Instead experiment until you find what system works for you and your lawn. You may find your lawn can only take five minutes of watering before the street below begins to receive its flood, if so then adjust to this and only water in five minute allotments before each rest. Likewise if your lawn can take fifteen minutes at a time, then do that. Your lawn may need a five minute rest between waterings or it may need twenty minutes to rest. Adjust as is required for your own lawn.
Like everything else with lawn care, we must take an overall approach to things, if we get all the little things right then all the big things often come together all by themselves. So read on to see a bigger picture at play here…
Fixing Lawn Soils
Having better quality lawn soils would obviously solve much of this issue for us. However to try to bring a soil quality improvement of this large a scale would be almost impossible, especially with the worst soils of all. So in reality and in practicality for the overwhelming majority of us, it’s just not an option.
Top dressing such lawn soils with a richer more organic soil will do very little for us to solve this problem. Though we could approach this overall issue in this way, it would only be a tiny cog in the wheel which is the problem. Top dressing with a rich soil is always good when we have poor soils under our lawns, but for the immediate problem at hand, we need a more effective solution.
Wetting Agents
Wetting agents are a wonderful addition to our lawn and garden maintenance options. For those of us who must live with hydrophobic (water repellent) soils, we are wise to use them in lawns and gardens alike.
Wetting agents will aid in watering a sloping lawn, to help the soil absorb more water whenever it is watered, thereby reducing water runoff when we are watering a sloping lawn.
But once again, these products, just like top dressing, will have a limited overall impact on the situation we are facing and looking for a solution to.
Wetting agents are wise to use in this situation, and should be applied several times per year for greatest ongoing effectiveness. Even once or twice annual application would be better than none at all.
Mulch Mowing
Everyone should be mulch mowing. Period. It’s just that good for our lawns and soils.
Mulch mowing is when we leave lawn clippings on the lawn to rot back into the soil, instead of using a grass catcher to catch and then throw clippings away. Most lawn mowers now have the option of using a mulching plug which fits into the rear chute of the lawn mower, which in turn forced the lawn clippings to be cut finer by the blades, and which can push the clippings deeper into the lawn sward. These clippings then break down and rot into the soil, providing free fertiliser for the lawn, as well as providing more substance to the lawn soil and insulating the lawn soil from evaporative loss in Summer.
Mulch mowing lawns should always be looked upon as a long term, life of lawn practice. There are no instant results or miracles when we mulch mow our lawns, but over time and over years we should see results in our lawns and our soils.
Mulch mowing lawns can improve lawn soils over years, and these improvements can aid in helping a poor lawn soil to hold onto and distribute water more efficiently. But once again it must be stated that this is a long term solution, and once again is yet another small cog in a bigger wheel.
Increase Lawn Mowing Heights
A denser and thicker thatch layer on a sloping lawn will enable the lawn itself to hold onto more water each time we do water the lawn, less water will instantly run away from the lawn.
A denser thatch layer will also protect the lawn soil from drying out too much in the heat of the day as the increased thatch layer is protecting the lawn soil from evaporative water loss. A dryer soil will often repel more water than a soil which contains even the slightest amount of moisture. This will not only help the sloping lawn absorb more water during watering, but we will also be increasing overall lawn health too when we ensure the topsoil of the lawn never dries out too much, especially in Summer.
Bringing Everything Together
Let’s now bring these little ideas all together.
Why don’t we top dress our sloping lawns which have poor soil quality once every few years, to help improve soil quality.
And let’s start applying wetting agents to our sloping lawns at least once or twice every year.
Now, let’s start mulch mowing our sloping lawns from now on and forever.
And let’s increase the lawn mowing height of our sloping lawn too.
Finally, let’s begin to water our lawns a little differently, why not try 10 minutes on and 10 minutes off, then 10 minutes of watering again.
Individually these are all small things, together they help us out so much more. And even when working together they are likely not going to completely fix the problems we face when trying to water sloping lawns efficiently so as to eliminate water runoff completely, especially if we have very poor soil to begin with. But, combined they all will help to improve things for us, not just in overall water absorption when watering sloping lawns, but most definitely with our overall lawn health too.
Let’s now add to that mix, that we apply a slow release lawn fertiliser every three months, how much better and healthier our lawns will become with all these factors at work together.
We should be able to clearly see now that all these things working together, should help our sloping lawns not only in better water retention and in helping to reduce water runoff, but our lawns should be so much more healthier too.
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