"Warren" wrote in message
...
Doug Kanter wrote:
If you feel you need to water during the summer, do it late in the day,

I agree with what you say, except this.

If you water during the day, a lot of water is lost to evaporation. Some
won't even hit the grass before it evaporates. So you want to water when
the sun is down (and the wind is calm), but if you do it in the evening,
the blades of grass can stay wet all night, and invite fungal problems.

If you water at (or just before) dawn, you lessen the amount you loose to
evaporation before it even hits the ground. You'll loose some water to
evaporation - the water that never got to the ground, but remained on the
blades - when the sun comes up. You'll have less opportunity for fungal
problems. Remember, you really want to water the soil the grass is growing
in, not the blades themselves.

There's a link to my recently posted essay on lawn care in my signature.

I've heard about the fungus risk, but never had a problem with it. Still,
it's probably a good precaution, if you can water in the morning. In my
previous house, I could not because the water pipes made so much noise that
it disturbed people who were sleeping. Didn't water much anyway, which drove
my neighbor crazy. The guy was a moron when it came to mowing correctly. He
mowed at crew-cut level all season, and by early to mid June, his grass was
not just brown, but mostly dead. So, he'd water like crazy and have some
lawn spray idiots come to do the too-much-nitrogen trick. Former neighbors
say he's still struggling with the same routine of endless failure. :-)