How to Prepare Your Lawn For Less Watering Next Year

Fall might be the season for raking leaves, but it's also a great time to prepare your lawn for less watering next year. You can do this as part of fortifying your lawn for the winter. You'll need a plug aerator, some water absorbing polymers, a top dressing, and a leaf rake.

This method helps you achieve a healthy, vibrant lawn next year and will reduce the amount of precious water called for in next summer's heat. A little effort now will reduce watering requirements by as much as 40 per cent come next summer—enough to make a serious impact on any home owner's pocket book.

Follow these five steps:

1. Aerate thoroughly, Make as many as three passes over your turf instead of one.Use an only an aerator that removes plugs from the soil. Aeration tools that only pierce the soil defeat the purpose of aeration. For, while it will create a hole in the ground, that penetration compresses and compacts the soil area the hole it makes, defeating your purpose.
   
   
2. Next, broadcast or wind-spread water absorbing polymer crystals on your lawn at a rate 1-2 lbs per 1,000 sq. ft. Then, with a garden or leaf rake, move as many of the dry polymer crystals into the plug holes as possible. These granules will absorb up water to 400 times their dry weight. A granule the size of a freckle will hydrate up to the size of a small marble. That little granule becomes one of thousands of small reservoirs of water for the roots of your grass. When hydrated, the water crystals keep the soil moist and cool.You'll want to work as many of the crystals into the aerated plug holes as possible for them to reside close to the turf's root zone.
   
   
3. This is a good time to apply new seed in your lawn if needed. If your turf looks too thin, wind spread Kentucky Blue Grass seed at a rate up to 1 pound per thousand square feet. Apply other seeds at a rate up no more than 2-3pounds per thousand square feet.
   
   
4. Next, apply a top dressing to your lawn, and if you must, a commercial fertilizer. A top dressing usually consists of an enriched soil, compost or humus. An economical alternative to a full dressing is a granular organic soil conditioner. These usually come in bags up to 50 lbs, and increase water penetration and root activity in your soil. Any of these should be enough nutrition for your lawn without resorting to chemicals. Apply your topdressing at a rate of one cubic yard per thousand square feet. Or, apply a granular organic soil conditioner at a rate of up to 15 lbs per thousand square feet.
   
   
5. Do not water for at least 24 hours. This time will allow as many polymers on the surface to find their way into your turf. Then, when you do irrigate, be sure to saturate thoroughly on your first couple waterings. If you applied new seed, keep the soil moist until it germinates and becomes strong.
   

Do not be concerned about the hydrated crystals remaining on the surface. They will look like small water gel nuggets as the polymer hydrates. They will harmlessly decompose as they are exposed to direct sunlight. Many of them will find their way to the base of the grass blades. Until they decompose and disappear, they will actually serve to cool your turf from the heat of thesun.

This procedure can be done any time of growing season, and should be part of an annual lawn care program. Apply water crystals in the following year at a rate up to 15-30 percent of the first year's application, depending on the performance and results of their first season in your lawn. Organic soil conditioners and top dressing should be reapplied as needed.

Water Crystals Have Many Uses

By using polymer Water Crystals, your plants -- flowers, vegetables, trees, shrubs, lawns and houseplants -- have a better chance of getting over missed waterings and of surviving drought conditions.

But, polymer water crystals have many other uses around the home and in industry.

Water Crystals are popular in hand crafts and home decorating, for festive decorations like floating candles and candle designs. They are regularly used in wedding table designs. They can be easily colored to any spectrum of the rainbow.

They are the material inside hot/cold compresses for muscular/skeletal care, hot and cold packs and evaporative coolers (also known as cool ties, cool wraps, spin and neck coolers) for the head, neck and family pets.

Florists use them to preserve their product in shipping, much the same way that suppliers can ship foodstuffs overnight. Horticulturalists extend the shelf life of their plants by incorporating them in soil. Some potting soils now contain them as a standard ingredient.

Water Crystals are used in a variety of proprietary products in many industries, including humidors, commercially-produced hot/cold packs, drink chillers.

They are even used to feed roaches and crickets by those who raise reptiles. Organizations purchase them for adult and children events at picnics. Some are even packaged comically to be used as a hot soak in bathtubs. (Beware of clogging drains; and be sure to follow supplier instructions!)

They've been used to fight fires and as fire retardants. In small containers, they will absorb water from the bottoms of contaminated fuel tanks. They've been used in feedlots to help clean up unsightly messes and spills. They have been used as emergency water absorbers in floods.

Their main application is to help reduce irrigation in agriculture, home vegetable and flower gardens, house plants, and container gardening. After all, the use of Water Crystals in soils dramatically increases long-term, water holding capacity.

They help nurture plants by contributing to healthy plant life and growth. Every plant and animal needs water. The problem is that organisms require just right amount of moisture for its existenc. These polymers effectively absorb the excess water, alleviating runoff and storing it until needed by plants. In doing so, they reduce plant stress from being in an environment with too much or too little water.

Their use actually improves soil structure as they expand and contract in hydration and dehydration.

As a gardening product and soil amendment, Water Crystals significantly lengthen intervals between watering. This is true for lawns, vegetable and flower gardens, house plants, container gardens, trees, and field crops.

It is a myth (perhaps propagated on the Internet) that the crystals are harmful to plants or take water away from them, replacing the water with harmful chemicals. Instead they capture excess water and store it for plants.

When hydrated, each dry granule turns into a gel, containing the water it absorbs. By squeezing a hydrated crystal, the polymer won't leak moisture. Instead, it will break into smaller crystals or particles that dehydrate to smaller granules.

Super absorbent polymer (SAP) granules, when hydrated, save irrigation costs and help prevent plant stress from dry conditions in throughout the world, in nurseries, sod and turf farms, crop fields, in home gardens and residential lawns.

See how a small investment in this amazing product will help preserve your plants and help care for both indoor and outdoor container plants, improve soil and reduce water bills.

You cannot find a higher quality polymer crystal. Genuine Water Crystals are a quality processed, cross-linked polyacrylamide co-polymer. Despite the long technical name, Water Crystals are environmentally friendly and safe to all animals, pets and plants.

See for yourself. Go to: http://watercrystals.com/

How Water Crystals Reduce Plant Watering Requirements

One way to manage the moisture provided to your plants actually reduces your requirements for watering. This technology has been applied by farmers and agronomists to improve soil, increase plant production, and conserve water.

Through it:

• Farm production yields have grown as much as 150 percent.
  
• Turf farms have kept grass green throughout the year while diminishing water use.
  
• Garden centers and flower shops have increased the shelf life of their plants and cut flowers.
  
• Arborists have increased the vitality rate of their seedlings.

A product offering this technology is free-flowing, white polymer granules that absorb and store 400 times their weight in water. As each granule swells when immersed in water, it turns into a gel-like substance containing the water that it stores and releases to plants. In just several minutes, a white granule the size of a freckle plumps up with water to the size of a small marble.

Swelled with water, it is as clear as a diamond; but, you cannot squeeze water from it. Press it, and it breaks into smaller crystals. When mixed or tilled with soil, the crystals’ membranes are penetrated by feeder roots of plants that are drawn to reservoirs or water. These roots seek life-sustaining hydrogen and oxygen——two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, in fact.

Gradually, the hydrated crystals are drained of water by the plant and from ambient temperature at a rate much slower than water evaporates. Then, when it rains or when the soil is watered, the de-hydrated or partially de-hydrated polymer crystals absorb excess moisture to continue the process.

They’ll do this thousands of times, with life cycles up to and 12 years and more. Because the growth medium is much less compacted than untreated soil (due to the expansion and contraction of the crystals as they go through repeated hydration/dehydration cycles), the soil's natural ability to hold water improves over time.

Users of this Water Crystals have reduced watering frequency by as much as:

• 20-40% for most gardens and irrigated field crops,
• 15-40% on lawns and golf courses, and
• 50-75% for potted plants.

If fertilizer is present and washed into the soil with water, the water crystals absorb the mixture. This prevents the nutrients from percolating through the soil and past the root system, where it does no good but actually can be harmful in runoff or seepage that can cause chemical contamination.

The crystals need to expand fully upon initial watering. This is best accomplished by pre-swelling them prior to blending with soil. To do this, add water at a rate of 6 gallons per half pound of dry crystals and allow the mixture to stand until water has been completely absorbed. For smaller amounts, a good starting point is once teaspoon of water crystals for each cup of water.

Water crystals are not a substitute for adequate watering and fertilizing. They only increase the medium’s water holding capacity and enhance the efficient use of available water by a plant. Soil should never be allowed to completely dry out, and water crystals will help you prevent your plant's growth media from drying out.

They are helpful for growing container plants, potted plants, vegetables and flowers in gardens, sod, trees, shrubs and field crops. For more complete details and ordering information, visit the Water Crystals’ Web site,

http://www.watercrystals.com.