Utah is in the middle of one of its most extreme droughts in recent history. Not only does the drought have a huge impact for farmers and utilities in our entire region, it’s also impacting home gardens and landscapes. Maybe you’ve already been put on a limited watering schedule by your local water utility service.
“The water situation right now — though we have adequate capacity to get us through this year, we don’t know what next year will bring. So it’s very important that how we use water indoors and outdoors”
In this post we’ll learn about the drought and conserving water from Stephanie Duer, Water Conservation Specialist with Salt Lake City Public Utilities. In our interview with her, she explained why the drought is so bad, and shared tips on how to conserve water in your garden and landscapes whether we are experiencing drought or not.
Utah’s water supply is at an extreme low, with 99% of the state experiencing an “exceptional drought,” the most severe stage of drought that the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) recognizes. NIDIS is a multi-agency partnership that coordinates drought monitoring, forecasting, planning, and information at national, state, and local levels across the country.
This has been brought on by years of low precipitation, snowpack, stream flow and especially by our very hot recent summers. Stephanie told us that all of these factors, including our increasingly “creeping up” water usage over the last three years, have led to low water storage in our reservoirs.
“So statewide, the situation is serious,” Stephanie told us, “and we all need to step up and do our part to help to conserve water, to be very mindful of how and when we water, and how and when we use water indoors as well.”
When dry conditions hit Utah, Stephanie says she gets questions about removing lawn for other landscape alternatives, like xeriscaping or hard scapes. “I get a lot of questions about ‘Hey, do I need to rip out my lawn and put in gravel or something?’ and I say, ‘No!’ I mean, if you want to do something different than lawn, then by all means! But lawn really isn’t the whole problem here.”
For one thing, lawn does provide benefits to most landscapes. “It’s the lawn we select, and [our] relationship with lawn,” Stephanie says, that is often the problem. Stephanie recommends thinking about whether you like your lawn and if it is useful to you. If your lawn has practical or aesthetic value, then there are other things you can do to save water that might make more sense than removing your lawn.
If you decide that your lawn is valuable to you, but you’re trying to reduce water use, it’s important to know that lawn is resilient and an easy landscape feature to troubleshoot or replace in a drought. Trees, shrubs, vegetable gardens, and perennial borders are more sensitive to drought than lawn, and often more difficult (i.e. heartbreaking) to replace. So when watering restrictions hit your area, consider prioritizing your available water to those more sensitive and harder to replace plants.
Because lawn is so resilient to water stress, Stephanie said it can go for weeks without water. “If you water your lawn only even just once or twice a month right now, your lawn will survive. It might [turn brown and] go dormant, but it will be alive,” which means that it will bounce back quickly if water conditions improve or when cooler temperatures return in the fall. Stephanie reassures homeowners that “come August and September when our day lengths begin to shorten, and our nights cool, that [dormant] lawn will green up and it will be just fine.”
As a general rule the way to know if your trees, or your vegetable garden, or your shrubs need watering is to apply about one inch of water, for a caliper (or the diameter to the tree) at least once or twice a month. If it’s a shrub, figure about a gallon of water for one foot of height of the shrub.
If you’ve decided that lawn and other vegetation are important to have in your landscape, but you’re trying to save water, it helps to know what the signs of water stress are so that you are only watering your plants when it’s needed. Stephanie told us that she has two simple ways of determining when her plants need water.
The first way is to look closely at the leaves of your plants for signs of wilting. Do this in the cool of the morning, when plants are less likely to be wilting under midday heat. If your plants are already wilting early in the day, that’s a good sign that they need water.
The second way to know if you need to water is to check the soil dryness around your plants and in your lawn. Stephanie recommended using a long screwdriver, 6-8 inches long, and plunging it into the soil. “If the screwdriver goes in easily, about 2-3 inches, then you know that the soil is moist and you don’t need to water.”
When it comes to saving water in a drought, Stephanie says the easiest thing you can do is just wait a day to water. “If you’re watering your lawn, whatever your schedule is, wait a day,” she says. “Your trees and shrubs, just wait a day to water. It’s a really simple technique.”
Once you’ve started waiting a day to water, the next important step is to check your sprinkler and irrigation systems to be sure they’re working as efficiently as possible. Stephanie gave us three important methods for improving the efficiency of your irrigation.
These steps are admittedly more involved than simply watering less, but they are worth the investment because not only will you save a lot of water, you’ll also save money while your plants benefit from more appropriate watering for their needs. So let’s get into it!
Hydrozoning is an important part of efficient watering, because it groups plants by their water needs. What this often looks like is a watering system that has been split into multiple zones through its water controller and the mapping of its water lines. Separate zones are often created for lawns, shrub borders, flower beds and trees.
Hydrozoning will ensure that you aren’t watering your entire landscape to meet the needs of your thirstiest plants, which not only benefits your water bill, but also benefits your drought tolerant plants!
The other benefit to hydrozoning is that when dry seasons hit, it’s much easier to prioritize your plants that need water and won’t be as resilient against dry conditions. When you hydrozone, you can let your lawn go dormant while still keeping the rest of your landscape healthy and vigorous.
Water delivery into landscapes is often divided into three categories: in-ground pressurized systems with controllers, in-ground pressurized systems without controllers (which means you turn it on manually), and hose draggers. Hose draggers tend to under water, people with pressurized systems that don’t have controllers tend to water almost right at plant water need, and those with irrigation controllers tend to over water because they set a clock, and let that system come on regardless. This means their systems sometimes water when it doesn’t need to. So it’s important for either homeowners or property managers to control the controller.
How do you control the controller? First, know where the shut off is, so if you don’t want to run the system you can simply turn it off. Second, make sure you adjust the controller to reflect the season. Nighttime temperatures in May are relatively cool so you only need to water once a week. As we move into June and July (and depending on the drought), watering one to two times a week should be enough. In August, turn you controller back down. Days are hot, but nighttime temperatures drop and day-length shortens. Plants don’t need as much water later in the summer, so move back to watering only once a week.
Broken or clogged irrigation systems can waste more water than you think. Something as simple as a tilted sprinkler head can waste a lot of water in a landscape! It will water one area really well, while allowing the adjacent area to go completely dry, often causing homeowners to think “I’ve got a dry spot, I need to water more.” So observe all of your spray heads and correct them in a timely manner.
Another thing to do is to look at your sprinkler heads. There are heads that are less efficient, and heads that are more efficient. Multi-trajectory multi-spray heads emit little streams of water in a rotating pattern slowly enough that the water has time to penetrate the soil, allowing it to move deeper into the soil profile. This strengthens plant roots, which helps improve resiliency during drought. These nozzles can reduce water use in a lawn area by as much as 15%, and they’re relatively inexpensive. You can get them at many home improvement stores and in options that spray in a full 360, 180, or 90 degrees. They come with different lengths of spray as well, so you can customize your irrigation system to avoid overspraying on the sidewalk or other areas that don’t need water. (Salt Lake City provides a rebate on multi-trajectory spray-head nozzles which you can learn more about here: utahwatersavers.com/)
If you have a drip system, you can still be wasteful. If you have a break in the system or clogged heads, it may make it seem like your drip system needs to be run more often and for longer periods because your plants aren’t getting the water they should be. Check your drip system for little bits of rock or calcium that often clog up outlets.
If you live within the Salt Lake City service area, you are eligible for an irrigation efficiency water check through the CWEL program, so visit cwel.usu.edu/watercheck to see if you’re eligible and to sign up!
Along with watering less and improving the efficiency of your irrigation system, there are also 2 simple ways to reduce the need for water in your landscapes in the first place!
There is a direct correlation between the length of your grass and the length of their roots, so when you mow your lawn really short, the roots of your grass will be shorter and more susceptible to damage from heat and weather variations or drought. So mow high, grow those roots deep, and use less water.
Mulch your shrub and perennial borders with 2 to 3 inches of mulch. This will keep the soil cool and moist, and it will help water stay in the soil longer. It will also help suppress weeds, which are really competitive and tend to take water from the plants you want to grow.
You can also mulch your lawn by leaving your grass clippings in place. Grass clippings provide fertilizer, but also they also shade the soil and the roots of the grass so that the soil stays moist longer.
We hope that these tips will help improve the health and happiness of your landscape during the drought. Starting with the easiest tips will get you far, and taking the time to improve the efficiency of your irrigation systems will ensure that your investments in your landscape can be enjoyed for years to come!
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