Our yards will have to learn to live with less water. Fortunately, they don’t have to look like they do.
The news from the South Florida Water Management District is that watering will be limited to one day a week. Here are five good ways to keep a happy face on your landscape, while you’re also slimming down the water bills.
1. Let the grass grow: About 2 to 3 inches of blade holds the cool air close to the ground and keeps it from drying out so quickly.
Some lawn-care experts also recommend that when you do cut, you use a mulching mower to further keep moisture from evaporating; others say the mulch keeps the water from reaching the grass roots. A good, deep watering once a week, preferably with mulcher-mowing the following day, should give the grass maximum protection time from the cut and mulched blades while they dry, so it will be ready to slurp again by the following week.
2. If you’re laying sod, give it a good home: Make sure it’s seated in 2 to 3 inches of what gardeners call “amended soil.†That is, the soil has had ingredients added that make it spongy and fertile.
One of the reasons Florida’s lawns need so much water is because they’re in the native sandy soil that drains like a sieve. Mix one-third ratio of composted manure (Black Cow is the brand carried by most garden centers and some big-box stores here) and one-third garden soil into the sand; that makes it much easier for the grass you put in to retain nourishment and water.
The concept of composted manure may sound less than fragrant, but don’t worry; it doesn’t smell like the bovine stalls at a county fair. Composted manure has been aged until the ammonia, and the strong smell, have evaporated.
3. Mulch, mulch, mulch: If you have flower beds, make sure they have mulch that’s at least up to your thumb socket when you stand your hand on the ground. We like pine straw, aerating it a bit so it’s not in dense clumps, and pile it up wrist high. You can buy it by the bale in Naples and Fort Myers at Forestry Resources.
Wood chips or wood mulch — anything that breaks down as a soil amendment — is a plus. Rocks will also hold moisture in, but they don’t do anything for the soil.
Just make sure you don’t bury stems or trunks in mulch. Stop several inches from stems or a foot or so from larger trees, so the trunks have breathing room.
If you’re mulching for the first time, put several layers of newspaper — no glossy inserts, however — on the ground before you mulch. It will kill any grass and keep weeds away until well after the paper has decomposted.
4. Stop trying to grow grass in areas you’re constantly resodding: Nature is telling you something. Of course, those infuriating brown patches seem to materialize in spots where you wouldn’t naturally hoe up a flower bed. This calls for some ingenuity: perhaps a triangle at the corner of your lot, perhaps an entire curb strip devoted to low-growing, low-water plants; perhaps a pathway with stamped tiles that goes through the brown area to camouflage it.
If you’re landscaping-challenged, call a professional. If you want to try your hand at it, an extremely useful book is “Easy Gardens for South Florida†by Pamela Crawford. If you want to fall in love with, or convince your spouse of, the concept of changing grass to garden, take a look at the book “Front Yard Gardens: Growing More than Grass†by Liz Primeau, which has several knockout southern front yards in its mix.
Collier County Library has at least 15 copies of the Crawford book and two copies of the Primeau book.
5. Give your garden some tougher plants: Shady areas can take some of the water lovers because the moisture won’t evaporate as quickly, but in sunny areas, consider swapping out the impatiens for pentas, or some low-growing varieties of bougainvillea.
There are dwarf varieties of firebush (Hamelia patens) that lend an orange glow and small pendant clusters of blooms all year long. Those yellow bromeliads known as Aechmea blanchetiana promise continuous lemony color, and bloom with spectacular hot pink and orange spikes. These are worth buying from a better garden center or one of the individual sellers, because a strong bromeliad will produce one to three offsets known as “pups†per year, so you can turn three good plants into 10 to 15 within two to three years.
Or consider flowering trees. Cassia grows fairly small and blooms much of the year with sunny yellow flowers.
“Drought-tolerant, Low-maintenance Plants for South Florida Yards and Florida Landscapes,†a University of Florida publication, is complete and thorough — 34 pages — and available online as well as through the extension office, 353-4244..
Looking for a quick and easy plant guide? There’s an article from Sarasota Extension Agent Michael Holsinger online. See the side story for both titles.
And save your water for drinking instead of sprinkling.
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