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Watering the lawn is necessary, and we tend to use a huge amount of water for this task. A beautiful and healthy lawn would naturally give us the impression a big amount of water has been used to care for it. But as environment consciousness arises among us, we get to think about conserving more water and not wasting it. This is especially so when water is a scarce resource in your area. Many areas in the country also experience drought or near-drought conditions so water conservation becomes a necessity.
Lawn grass can generally go without water up to six weeks (depending on the condition of the lawn, soil, and other factors, of course). For lawns that go dormant and turn brown, we will need about two weeks of adequate moisture to make them green and healthy again.
To keep our lawns healthy and green without wasting water, here are some tips to help keep the grass growing:
Mowing at the Highest Setting: When mowing your lawn, keep the grass up to 3 ½ inches high. This will help the grass shade its roots and reduces moisture loss from the soil.
Grass Clippings: If you've just used the clippers, you don't have to go through the trouble of cleaning up the grass clippings afterwards. Just leave them there and let them break down to improve the quality of the soil underneath. The clippings can shade the soil and also add a trace of nitrogen.
Early Morning Ritual: Make it a habit to water your lawn early in the morning. You can feel that there is more moisture in the air when you step outside at the early hours. When watering your lawn, try to keep the water flowing as close to the ground as possible.
Pray for Rain: Lawns generally need one inch of water every week. If the rain comes during the week, then you may skip the watering. You can also try to reduce the amount of water to ¾ to ½ inch a week for a couple of weeks. Apply the total amount in one application per week. Frequent and short waterings will only cause damage and root problems.
Stick to Your Decision: Once you've made the decision to water your lawn or not, you stick with it and follow through. Go with your routine always. If you allow the lawn to go dormant and then revive it after several weeks, you might encourage more damages to the grass and even invite pests and diseases. When this happens, you might be in need of more water than what you could have just allotted all throughout those past weeks of leaving your lawn alone.
These are just some of the things that you can do to take care of your lawn without wasting too much water. It's really all about management and knowing what makes the grass healthy or dry. Just always remember to follow through with your decision and lawn care routine. Caring for your lawn is not something you can let go for a few weeks and then take up again after a couple of months.
In order to conserve water in a shower, you can use a shower head that doesn't allow quite as much water to pass through, this is generally regarded as a low-flow shower head. You can buy these at just about any home improvement warehouse, and they're usually not too expensive. For those who are concerned about the environment this is definitely a good investment.
If you are using a bathtub then you can conserve water by not filling the tub all the way up. Generally a tub will require thirty gallons to fill, and that's quite a bit of water wasted. It's true that you won't be able to completely immerse yourself in water during your bath, but you will be able to get yourself clean which is the aim of bathing anyway.
So now on to the big question, which is better: bathing or showering. Statistically a shower requires 13-14 gallons of water while a bath requires about thirty. This means that a bath requires twice as much water as a shower. But like we said, you can drastically reduce the amount of water in a bath by only filling it halfway. Take note that a gallon in the UK is two pounds heavier than a gallon in the US, and therefore is something to consider when you think about water conservation.
These figures are based on the assumption that you take short showers lasting about ten minutes in length. If you decide to take a shower that lasts for thirty minutes up to an hour then you will obviously be using much more water and might even surpass the water capacity of a full bathtub. Of course this is not an open and closed case because every individual is completely different. If you're really interested in saving water though, there are some things that you can do.
The first thing that you can do obviously is take shorter showers, but as you know there is a time before the shower when we waste more water than we know. This is what we call the warm-up time. You know exactly what I'm talking about, it's the time where you wait for the water to warm up in your bath. With showers this isn't quite extreme because most people turn the shower off and jump back three feet as to not be hit by the cold water. Those who are smart will stand outside of the shower and turn the knob, but as you know not everyone has learned this.
If you are doing this during a bath then you can place a bucket under the faucet to collect the cold water. After you do this there are all kinds of things that you can do with it. One thing is watering the plants around the house, or even doing dishes later. The possibilities are endless!
So what we've learned here today is that whether you use a bath or a shower you are going to waste water. In spite of this the best option is a shower if you truly wish to conserve water. Taking short showers really is the answer, so if you think it's for you then look into a low-flow shower head and start saving!