Lawn Watering

Question: I am living in California MD in a townhouse.  The yard has areas that get all day sun and others that get mostly shade.  My landlord insists on watering every day running all zones for 15 min each.  The lawn is new sod that was put down over sandy clay without much if any soil amendment.  The landlord had the sprinkler system installed and has found that he has to water daily to keep the lawn thick and green to his liking.  He only has a few weeks of the lawn being in this condition which was just before  moved in.  I cut the system back to every third day as tie lawn was too wet to cut.  and area in the front that gets all day sun started to tunn brown so he insisted on going back to 1 min every day saying it would come back because it did before.  What he fails to realize is that he also fertilized when he started watering daily.  The lawn was green but it started to turn brown as soon as we cut it.  I did not take much off in fact it was still pretty long but the it continued to turn brown and now he is back to watering every day.   The pictures show how it looked after he fertilized and was watering every day for at least three weeks.  The next two photos show what happened when it missed watering to 4 days.  I keep trying to tell him the lawn will not establish a health root system because the sod was put down over sandy clay.  He replied that he put top soil down on top of the grass to take care if that and I think it is now part of the problem.  Is there any reason to water a lawn every day for 15 minutes each zone.  All the zones are not separated between sun and shade areas so of you run a zone the has full sun more you are also over watering a shady area that does not need the water.   Some of the shady areas are turning brown and I think it is because they are always wet and they are wet when we cut the grass.  Please advise

responder: The Question Asker Replied August 22, 2024, 7:37 PM EDT
response: There are some typos I missed in the text of the question.   Where it says so he insisted on going back to 1 min every day it should say 15 mins every day

responder: Answered by the Home and Garden Information Center (HGIC), University of Maryland Extension. For timely gardening information and tips, subscribe to our Maryland Grows blog and quarterly newsletter. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Replied August 23, 2024, 10:34 AM EDT
response: When was the sod put down? That will, in part, determine how often it needs to be frequently watered. At some point, it will need to be weaned-off of the frequent watering to "train" the roots to grow deeper to access moisture. Sod establishment can take as little as 2-3 weeks, but may take longer if it's not rooting-in as well as it should during that time. A soil texture of sandy clay isn't necessarily a problem, though good soil contact with the sod roots is important, and if the installers didn't roll over it with a drum to make sure it's pressed onto the soil surface, it might be more prone to drying out.  Frequent watering is needed for establishing grass, but the risk it brings is encouraging disease outbreaks like Brown Patch. This can be worsened if the grass is watered late in the day, so that blades don't dry fully by nightfall, as prolonged leaf wetness makes foliage more vulnerable to infection. Make sure mower blades are sharp and not worn-down as well, since the injury to grass blade tips by dull blades can provide spores with an easy way into the leaf. Despite the drought conditions prevalent across much of Maryland this summer, we've still seen instances of Brown Patch in residential lawns.  The sod was installed earlier than is recommended (we assume it's fescue sod, not zoysia, the latter of which is planted in summer). However, if laying it at that time it was required to manage erosion on nearly-cleared soil, then there might not have been much alternative. Cool-season turfgrass does not naturally grow in the heat of summer -- it goes dormant -- so that could be slowing the establishment process. Irrigation can partially force it out of dormancy, which for established lawns would not be recommended, though this is a special case since it needs irrigation to not cause root death before it can establish.  We're entering prime season for cool-season lawn care right now (September is the ideal time to manage fescue lawns), so hopefully cooling night temperatures will help the grass recover. If it does seem to recuperate, a second fertilization might help it fill back in again and root-in faster, as long as the fertilization complies with the restrictions outlined by Maryland law so too much is not applied. Our Fertilizing Home Lawns and Lawn Fertilizer Schedule web pages provide more info. If one was not performed earlier, a laboratory soil test is useful to determine what the soil nutrient content and acidity (pH) is, in order to better customize what fertilization or liming may be needed going forward.  For established lawns, watering patterns should be the opposite of what they are during the establishment phase; therefore, longer-duration, deeper-soaking, less frequent watering sessions. As an example, in hot, dry weather, irrigating once or twice per week should suffice to keep turfgrass roots alive. How long a sprinkler zone would need to run in that case is hard to say, since water pressures vary, but it could be over an hour. If the system's zones are set up such that they're not very adjustable or customizable, that's unfortunate, but maybe a work-around could be changing the program manually to skip the shady zones when it's still damp, resetting them to run again when they dry out enough. If a zone spans both sunny and shady areas, then maybe you or the landlord would just have to pick the schedule that works best for the shadier section and manually water (like with a repositionable sprinkler) the sunny area more as it's needed based on weather. Depending on how heavy the shade is in the shadier areas, eventually, turfgrass may struggle to thrive in those areas anyway (especially once those shade trees mature more), so they could be converted to other plantings or groundcovers in that eventuality.  Miri