Water, Water, Everywhere – But Not Enough - theorangetimes.com

-

By Pat Dray
The Garden Spot

Dray Head Shot

Pat Dray

Although the Earth is considered a “water planet,” with over 70 percent of the surface covered by the stuff, less than 1 percent of that water is considered available for human needs. The other 99 percent is in the oceans, frozen in glaciers and ice caps or in soil moisture.

As our state has become more developed, residential usage has expanded significantly with a concurrent growth in the use of managed landscapes – in other words, lawns.

Unfortunately, with expanded lawns comes expanded use of water for irrigation and chemicals for turf maintenance. According the EPA fact sheet “Outdoor Water Use in the United States,” approximately 30 percent of the available water is used for outdoors, the majority of which is for lawn irrigation.

Understanding that lawn irrigation is a non-essential use of a limited resource should lead us to reducing usage through a few easy steps.

First, if you are thinking about reseeding a lawn, be aware that no turf grasses are native grasses and therefore do not support biodiversity. You can reduce water usage by reducing the size of turf areas and instead use landscape plants such as ground covers that are drought resistant.

If you must reseed or replant, choose a tall fescue over a Kentucky blue grass since the fescue has been developed to be drought resistant.

You do not need to water a lawn daily. Lawns typically need about one inch of water a week, with a deeper watering leading to deeper root growth and a healthier lawn. Since the average annual rainfall in Connecticut is 48 inches, there should be many weeks when irrigation is completely unnecessary. If using an irrigation system, use one with a weather-based sensor to prevent overwatering. Studies have shown that a properly installed weather-based system will reduce water usage by about 15 percent.

Lawns are also treated as heavy feeders, with many vendors selling “four step programs” whether they are needed or not. Overtreatment of turf is problematic for a variety of reasons, including your health and your wallet. The EPA estimates that 95 percent of residential lawn pesticides contain possible or probable carcinogens – hence all those little yellow signs that pop up faster than dandelions in the spring.

Sustainable lawn practice begins with a soil test. What nutrients are actually missing from your soil? Is the pH such that it allows for nutrient uptake? Tailor any program based on actual need to minimize overuse of lawn chemicals and read the instructions to avoid overapplication.

If you use a landscape firm to manage your lawn and they haven’t done a soil test, they are probably overtreating. Overtreatment creates more nutrient and pesticide runoff into our watershed (Long Island Sound) and to lakes and ponds, which increases aquatic plant growth, killing fish and amphibians.

Finally, don’t mow too short. Leave the grass three inches tall, and leave the grass clippings since they provide nitrogen to the lawn. Practicing good management techniques are easy and affordable.

If you’re interested in learning more, you can download the EPA fact sheet at 19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/watersense/pubs/outdoor.html. For more information about soil testing, you can visit soiltest.uconn.edu.



https://ift.tt/2tMAt6y

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All In The Family: Maine Mother & Son Charged in Massive Drug Bust

-
Image
corso dog :: Article Creator Woman Hospitalized After Attack By 2 Dogs At Same Edmonton Home Where Boy Died: Lawyer UPDATE: On April 15, 2024, the City of Edmonton provided an update on the fatal attack. It said that prior to the deadly incident on April 1, "the city had no lawful basis to remove the dogs from the home." The city added that "all prior complaints about the dogs involved in this incident were investigated thoroughly and appropriate action was taken in accordance with the applicable legislation." The city also said a review found that its staff "acted appropriately in accordance with our standard practices and in compliance with the relevant legal constraints given the nature of past complaints and reports." A woman was hospitalized after being attacked in February by two large Cane Corso dogs at the same home where an 11-year-old boy was killed last week, the woman's lawyer told Global News. "I
Read more

Rare Frogs And Illegal Drugs - Palisades Hudson Financial Group

-
Image
Colombian conservationist Ivan Lozano has hit on a brilliantly promising strategy to protect his country’s rare and endangered amphibians. His plan: Flood the market with them. Lozano is not hunting rare frogs in Colombia’s Andean forests. He is raising them himself and selling them at prices designed to undercut poachers and smugglers. If he can raise the frogs cheaply enough, and in large enough numbers, he might manage to drive down the market price to the point that poachers no longer find it worthwhile to harvest and smuggle the creatures onto the black markets. Lozano told The Associated Press that his company also encourages collectors to breed their own frogs. Picture yourself as a poacher. If the government toughens the legal penalties and steps up enforcement, you will shrug your shoulders; legal risks are a basic cost of doing business. Since the demand for your product already exists among foreign collectors and other buyers, tougher enforcement merely reduces supply a
Read more

Burn scars, winter storms threaten rare and endangered species in San Gabriel Mountains - The Bakersfield Californian

-
Image
LOS ANGELES — Up until a few weeks ago, the West Fork of the San Gabriel River was one of the most abundant wildlife habitats in Los Angeles County, a secluded and rugged area defined by its steep peaks, lush canyons and mixture of rare and endangered species. Recently however, a team of federal biologists and forest rangers was aghast when it visited the stream following the Bobcat fire, which has burned more than 115,000 acres in the heart of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. Terrain that once resembled a High Sierra granite gorge now looked like ground zero after a nuclear explosion, and the usually clean mountain air was sharp with the stench of smoke. Particularly unsettling were the bare and ashen slopes that were now primed to dissolve under pounding winter storms. A heavy mudslide, experts said, could reverse decades of conservation efforts by inundating the last outposts for such federally protected species as the Santa Ana sucker fish and Southern California m
Read more