Lawn care guide

The Best Time to Water Your Lawn (and Exactly How Long)

The best time to water a lawn is early morning, ideally before 9 a.m. The air is cool, the wind is calm and the water soaks in before the sun can evaporate it, which means more of it actually reaches the roots. Watering in the evening leaves the blades damp overnight and invites fungal disease, and watering at midday wastes much of it to evaporation before it does any good.

Deep and infrequent beats a little every day

The most common mistake is watering lightly every day. Shallow watering trains roots to stay near the surface, where they dry out fast and leave the lawn fragile. Instead, water deeply and less often: most lawns want about 1 to 1.5 inches of water per week, including rain, delivered in one or two longer sessions rather than seven short ones. Deep watering pushes roots down where the soil stays cooler and moister, so the lawn rides out a dry spell far better.

How to know you have watered enough

• Put an empty tuna can on the lawn while the sprinkler runs and stop when it collects about an inch.
• Or push a screwdriver into the soil after watering: if it slides in 6 inches easily, the water reached the root zone.
• During water restrictions, let the lawn go dormant and brown rather than fighting it. Healthy grass recovers when the rain returns.

Watering keeps a lawn alive, but mowing at the right height and frequency is what keeps it looking cared for. If keeping up with both through the summer is more than you want to take on, a local lawn provider can handle the mowing on a set schedule so you only have to manage the sprinkler.