- Understanding the drought is super important, not only for water conservation efforts, but also to improve the health and happiness of your plants.

(light music) Today, we're excited to have Stephanie Duer from Salt Lake City Public Utilities to tell us a little bit more about how we can efficiently and effectively water our plants.

- Utah overall is experiencing either a extreme or exceptional drought stage right now.

Over the last 20 years, we've reduced water use by over 27%, and we've reduced peak day demand by 31%.

That's amazing.

Currently, right now, our water use is creeping up, though, over our last three-year average.

And it's been hot and dry for the spring, but it's very important that people are mindful right now about how we're using water out of doors.

If every household reduced water usage out of doors 79 gallons a day, which really is just one irrigation a week, we would do a great deal towards meeting our goals for this drought right now.

I get a lotta questions about, "Hey, do I need to rip out my lawn and put in gravel or something?"

And I say, "No."

The thing to think about with your lawn is it has a lot of value.

It helps sequester carbon.

It can cool.

It helps the soil biome and it provides habitat for insects and it helps with stormwater quality because it helps filter water.

Lawn really isn't the whole problem here.

It's the lawn we select and it's our relationship with lawn and how we water it.

I'd like to share three tips with you to save water in your landscape.

Water less, mow high, and mulch.

The first thing you can do is just water less.

Whatever your watering schedule is, wait a day to water.

Your landscape won't die in a day and you'll save a lot of water over the course of the season.

So water your lawn less often, water your shrub borders less often.

Just wait a day to water.

Something to consider is whether or not you're hydrozoned.

What that means is, that the plants in your landscape are grouped by similar water need and then irrigated appropriately.

So this means that your lawn, for instance, is watered on one zone and your shrub borders or trees are watered on another zone.

The other value of being hydrozoned is it means if you don't water your lawn, you can still water the rest of your landscape and keep that healthy and vigorous.

If you also want to improve the efficiency of your irrigation system, whether this is your lawn or for the rest of your garden, you have to do maintenance.

If you have a drip system, you can still be wasteful.

If you have a break in the system somewhere or clogged heads, look at your system while it's operating.

Look at those spray heads on your lawn or in the shrub borders.

Are they sunken?

Are they tilted?

Are they cracked?

Do they leak?

If they do, fix them.

Another thing you can do to save water in your landscape is mow high.

There's a direct relationship between blade length and root depth in lawn.

So the shorter you mow your lawn, the shorter the roots are.

And when the roots are short, it actually stresses the grass out and makes it more susceptible to damage because of changes in weather and temperature.

So by mowing higher, you actually let those grass roots grow much deeper and the lawn needs less water.

The last thing you can do to save water in your landscape is mulch.

Mulch everything.

Mulch your perennial and shrub borders.

Mulch around your trees.

Now, don't pile the mulch around the base of your shrubs or your tree trunks or the crowns of your perennials.

Pull that mulch back a couple of inches, but have your mulch two to three inches deep.

It will help keep the soil cool.

It'll help the soil retain moisture.

And it also suppresses weeds, and weeds are really competitive and suck up a lot of moisture.

So mulch is a really good tool in your shrub and perennial borders.

But you can also mulch your lawn.

When you cut your grass, leave those clippings on the lawn.

The clippings shade the soil and the stolons of the roots so that they don't need as much water.

They also, as they decompose, provide nitrogen.

And so you can save a fertilization by leaving the grass clippings on your lawn.

Last summer was one of the hottest summers on record, and the fall was exceptionally dry, so we also have very dry soil moisture.

It's very important right now that we're all mindful of how we use water indoors and out so that we don't waste a drop.

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