You've Got Better Things To Do Than Water The Lawn

A quality Underground Sprinkler System is convenient, affordable, and adds $$ to your home's value

Dear Homeowner,

Whether you have a brand new home with no landscaping at all, or your home is a well-established property, improving the appearance of your yard can make a huge difference in your property value. Not to mention the simple beauty of a well-designed, fully-bloomed yard.

But yard work can require a lot of maintenance. And a lot of people don't know how to get the most out of their yard. So, they spend a lot of money upgrading their yard, putting in turf, trees, shrubs, and maybe some flowers, and spend countless hours caring for their yard, only to have a lawn with some patches greener than others, and droopy flowers by the end of the season.

Frustrated with the result, many people are tempted to opt out of all this work with a "low maintenance" yard - the type with a lot of rocks and cement, and very little green. Maintaining this type of yard saves a lot of time, but it's costly to install. And who wants to sit on the deck on a beautiful summer day, sipping a cold drink and watching the kids play on the rocks in the backyard?

Many, many people have asked me this question over the years. And the answer is simple, saves you time, and adds instant value to your home. The question is this:

"What's the best way to care for my yard?"

Experts agree that one of the biggest keys to having a healthy, lush yard is in the watering. Watering too little encourages shallow rooting, which will result in a yard requiring more frequent watering overall (and a big waste of water). Watering too much can cause mold, marshes, brown patches, runoff, disease, and other unsightly problems.

If you depend on nature to water the lawn, you're sure to be disappointed. Granted, if it rained every three days or so, the exact same amount, and at the optimal time, you could have a beautiful yard with little effort. But the weather doesn't work that way in Saskatchewan. You're more likely to get a long stretch of very hot sun, followed by a week's worth of downpour.

In my experience in the business, I've heard hundreds of watering tips. Water early in the morning, or else much of it will evaporate in the hot sun. make sure to water evenly, to prevent ugly patches of brown. Water in intervals, to allow the water to soak in. Consider the soil (sandy soil requires more frequent watering), the weather conditions (and how often is the weather forecast right in Saskatchewan??), and the types of plants when you are watering. There are hundreds more tips out there; many of them you might already know. The point of this is simple:

Who has time for all that?

In today's busy world, people are constantly searching for a way to squeeze out a few more precious minutes in a day. Few people want to get up extra-early in the morning a couple of times a week to turn on a sprinkler, wait awhile, turn it off, wait awhile, move it around, maybe get wet a couple of times, trip over the garden hose, move it again, then haul the hose in, coil it up, return it to the shed and head off for another day at the office. Do you?