What a difference a week makes. Last week we were celebrating the dry weather that finally arrived making our maintenance activities more successful. One week later, we are already seeing signs of the changing of seasons with dry spots beginning to show up. Now this may be odd following the extremely wet record breaking winter, but, it is a common occurrence every spring.
As the trees come out of dormancy and flush their leaves out and the weather dries out, there is a two-fold effect. The tree roots compete for the water in the soil and the tree canopy acts as an umbrella, keeping rain from reaching the soil below the trees. The result is dry spots under trees as show above. The resolution... Several choices.
Choice #1 Begin To Irrigate
This is not a great option as the areas under trees are not irrigated separately and one would have to irrigate the open areas at the same time where no water is needed. This wastes water and money.
Choice #2 Let Those Areas Dry Out
This is not a great option either as the areas under trees will look bad as in the pictures above. Our goal is to provide healthy, attractive landscapes and dry spots do not please many people.
Choice #3 Eliminate The Lawn
We have promoted this to many of our customers and are again now as the issues is at hand.
There are lots of options. Replacing lawn with just barkdust or some sort of groundcover are both options. We have experimented with Sedum like on green roofs but it has had marginal success. We are seeing locally and nationally the use of rock and are very excited about that as an option. Above are several pictures of a variety of alternatives to lawn. We like those with lots of rock as rocks do not need water and will never die. Some have expressed concern about the liability risk with rocks but we believe that is low. If someone wants to throw a rock through a window, they will find it even if there is no rock in the immediate landscape.
We do not have a completely accurate estimate on water savings but believe that eliminating lawn where it is difficult to irrigate will reduce water costs which will help pay for the conversion. We have calculated that typical lawns receive 4 feet of irrigation water in a typical irrigation season.This equates to about $.15 per sqft for water. These difficult to water areas may take more than 5-6 times as much irrigation. That could equate to almost $1.00 per sqft per year to irrigate. If that cost was significantly reduced or eliminated, it could provide 3-6 year ROI for converting to one of the above lawn alternatives. Not a bad investment.
The coming weeks are a good time to evaluate these areas as the dry spots are showing up now.
Forcast is for dry weather moving forward.
Even though it rained the last few days, dry weather is forecasted into the weekend so things may dry out again quickly. As can be seen in the graph below, typical soil moisture was used up quickly with the dry weather. The rain last night and forecast tonight will recharge soil but only slightly and will be gone again with the forecast dry weather over the weekend. This dry and wet pattern is typical and will likely occur for the next 2-3 months, leaving these areas that dry out quickly to be dry all spring. NORMAL and in need of long term discussion for resolution.
