Eliminating nonfunctional grass lawns saves water

Q: This caller instrumentality astir removing nonfunctional writer oregon lawns has got maine stumped. Where bash I commencement to fig retired the h2o usage of my landscape?

A: Nonfunctional lawns are lawns that capable the voids oregon other spaces successful a scenery design. These voids are similar the spaces betwixt your fingers. Our interest is connected the fingers (trees and shrubs) not utilizing h2o successful the spaces betwixt them (voids).

Nonfunctional lawns aren’t utilized for thing but quality oregon aesthetics successful a landscape. Fill scenery voids with non-water-using caller artwork, fences, structures, boulders, mounds and elevation changes. In my opinion, the usage of lawns to capable voids speaks to a deficiency of creativity and underappreciation of wherever we live.

Other nonfunctional lawns are utilized connected slopes oregon tiny areas arsenic an inexpensive mode to code hard parts of a scenery design. Lawns installed for this intent would beryllium considered nonfunctional.

Functional lawns, connected the different hand, are typically flat, quadrate oregon rectangular and supply a comparatively harmless aboveground for roughhousing and play. One of the purposes of assemblage parks and schools is to supply imperishable harmless play areas.

Lawn writer requires 5½ to 7½ feet of h2o each year. By the clip h2o losses are added successful for mean irrigation practices, leaks, runoff and puddling, the magnitude applied climbs (conservatively) different 12 to 24 inches each year. That means we indispensable use 6½ to 8½ feet of h2o depending connected the benignant of tract chosen.

A well-managed, 500-square-foot tract — 10 feet wide and 50 feet agelong — receives anyplace from 28,000 to implicit 35,000 gallons each year. Lawn areas would beryllium placed into a precise high-water usage category. If these nonfunctional uses for lawns are eliminated, past this magnitude of h2o tin beryllium saved.

These savings could beryllium gobbled up by choosing the incorrect works oregon utilizing excessively galore plants successful a landscape. All plants request water. Some plants usage much than others.

Select smaller trees successful standard with the location due to the fact that large plants usage much h2o than tiny plants. Use less trees and ample shrubs. Pick plants with a intent successful mind. Shade the southbound and westbound walls and windows of a location with deciduous trees oregon shrubs. Provide shadiness successful high-use extracurricular areas.

Where does your scenery fit? A low-water-use scenery requires an mean of 2 feet of h2o oregon little implicit its full aboveground each year. A mean water-use scenery requires 2 to 4 feet of water, and a high-water-use scenery uses implicit 6 feet of water. This means allocating h2o for shady areas.

Landscape h2o usage accounts for 60 to 70 percent of the gallonage recorded connected your h2o bill. Your July h2o usage invoice helps find your maximum exterior h2o usage and wherever your exterior h2o usage fits successful this scheme.

Q: What is your sentiment astir artificial lawns? I’ve heard some affirmative and antagonistic things astir them.

A: Twenty years agone I could spot artificial writer from a agelong mode off. Not anymore. Probably what gives high-quality artificial lawns distant present is their perfection. Depending connected its quality, installation and maintenance, artificial writer tin look precise good.

Artificial lawns person their bully points — they don’t usage h2o oregon necessitate immoderate sunlight — and their atrocious points — they get hot. During mid-March done September, their aboveground temperature, conscionable similar sidewalks and streets, tin scope 170 degrees successful afloat sun, whereas lawns are chill to the touch.

Lawns tin transportation these cooler temperatures to the homes they situation (at the disbursal of irrigation water). Research has demonstrated that the aforesaid cooling effect tin beryllium accomplished without a tract but by shading the walls and windows with low-water-use trees and shrubs connected the blistery sides of the home.

Have a intent different than beautification for artificial writer that you install. In our climate, I would powerfully suggest shading artificial writer from aboriginal outpouring to the mid-fall months. Remember that artificial lawns necessitate regular attraction and replacement implicit time. They fundamentally relation similar an outdoor carpet.

Q: I person 2 Raywood ash trees successful my landscape. One of these trees has immoderate limbs dying. Should I region it?

A: I would sprinkle irrigate a ample country nether the canopy of the histrion play for astir a period earlier deciding whether to region it. Irrigate it usually arsenic well.

If you spot caller maturation during this clip of other irrigation, past it does not person an ash illness but conscionable needs immoderate other water. If determination is nary effect from this other water, past program to region it.

The problems with ash trees are twofold: Many execute amended erstwhile surrounded by a tract alternatively than rock, and they are susceptible to disease. This illness looks precise akin to a deficiency of h2o (i.e., drought).

That’s wherefore I archer you to sprinkle irrigate nether the histrion first. Give it a fewer weeks of lukewarm upwind and spot if determination is caller maturation resulting from this other water.

This illness is called ash diminution successful Arizona and ash dieback successful California. It is precise communal connected Raywood ash successful California.

I person seen this illness connected different ash trees present arsenic good including Modesto, Bonita and Fan Tex (Rio Grande). By the way, too preferring improved soils, ash trees volition get precise large, up to 50 feet gangly and wide, truthful beryllium definite you person the scenery abstraction and tin spend to h2o it.

Q: I americium purchasing a ample Chinese pistache histrion from a section nursery that is being planted for free. I person heard immoderate fearfulness stories astir however these trees are planted. Is determination thing I should bash earlier it is planted?

A: The large complaints I person heard from homeowners are the deficiency of ungraded mentation and the size of the spread dug for these trees. Maybe this signifier works good extracurricular of Nevada, but our soils are bad.

The complaints are not astir the trees themselves. These trees look to beryllium of precise bully quality. Be prepared to extremity this planting unit for their other enactment and person other ungraded amendment disposable for them astatine planting time.

To circumvent this problem, marque definite the planting spread is dug wide capable and a bully prime ungraded amendment is added to the backfill. I similar to spot astir 25 percent amendment added to the backfill astatine planting time. The planting spread does not person to beryllium dug immoderate deeper than the roots (provided determination is nary drainage problem), but it should beryllium dug wide and the ungraded amended with a bully prime compost erstwhile it’s planted.

By the way, h2o should beryllium added to the planting spread arsenic the amended ungraded backfill is being added. This helps region aerial pockets. If planted this way, these trees volition not request different irrigation for astir a week during chill autumn weather.

Q: I can’t determine betwixt a chitalpa and a palo verde for a blistery south-facing beforehand yard. What bash you suggest?

A: The palo verde is little successful its request for h2o than the chitalpa, but they are akin successful size and h2o use. I thin to thin towards the palo verde for a mates of reasons.

There is simply a precise bully exposé connected chitalpa written by Rick Heflebower of Utah State University Extension regarding a illness occupation — leafage scorch, dieback and leafage driblet — that I person seen successful immoderate trees utilized here. He maintains that this illness is contiguous among each chitalpa trees.

Leaf scorch mightiness beryllium a crushed to destruct this histrion from consideration. The 2nd crushed is the imaginable for h2o savings by palo verde. Make definite to works different low-water-use plants connected the aforesaid irrigation valve, an irrigation plan method called hydrozoning.

There are fundamentally 2 types of palo verde trees disposable commercially, and some are from the Sonoran Desert: the bluish palo verde and foothills palo verde. The foothills palo verde survives with little applied h2o than the bluish palo verde and is genuinely debased successful its h2o use. But the foothills palo verde is not arsenic eye-catching arsenic immoderate varieties of bluish palo verde.

Bob Morris is simply a horticulture adept and prof emeritus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Visit his blog astatine xtremehorticulture.blogspot.com. Send questions to Extremehort@aol.com.