SEATTLE — Ciscoe says it’s shaping up to be a hot summer, so it’s important to water your lawn to keep it green. And he’s got a trick for measuring how long you need to water. He’s armed with a fancy berry-colored adjustable oscillating sprinkler from Dramm and some recycled plastic salsa containers.
“Experts say we should put one inch of water on our lawn every week. How do you know how much is one inch of water? These are the tools to help you figure it out!” he said, showing off the clear plastic containers he pulled out of his recycling bin that all have a black line drawn on them at the one-inch mark. “So what I did is I measured an inch up from the base on each one of these containers. When they're full to that mark, that's one inch of water.”
Place the containers all over your lawn, then set a timer, and crank up the sprinkler, and wait. The goal is to see how long it takes to fill the containers with an inch of water and also to check to make sure water is hitting your grass uniformly. If one container is getting full in a half hour, and another one just has a bit of water in it after the same amount of time, you may need to position your sprinkler better or find a new one with a spray pattern that works better with your lawn configuration.
"There's no way to know how long it's gonna take to fill these up to one inch,” said Ciscoe. “So don't go and work on the computer you won't know when they're full, just hang out and garden for a while!”
Ciscoe did just that, and his containers had water to the one-inch line after about 1 hour and 30 minutes, which means now he knows exactly how long to water his lawn each week.
Another good reason to stay outside when doing the watering test is that you may attract some fun visitors: “Keep an eye out for hummingbirds, they love flying through the water.”
Ciscoe loves flying through the water too, he got plenty wet while shooting this story. His wife Mary thought maybe he should run through the sprinkler a few more times. It was pretty good entertainment.
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