As the warmer temperatures start to show themselves in Colorado, it’s often very tempting to think about turning on your sprinkler system in March. My advice – DON’T. Unless you are a master at doing Emergency Shutdown procedures and don’t mind doing this every time the temps fall below freezing. The risk of having hundreds or possibly thousand’s of dollars of damage to your sprinkler system just isn’t worth it. Not to mention the potential for your basement to flood or foundation damage to occur if the Vacuum Breaker or manifold breaks from freeze damage; you should keep in mind that this area of your system is active water – always on 24/7. If this area breaks, the water will gush out the whole day or night until you get home from work – God Forbid you are on vacation when this happens. The Moral of the story is to just refrain from turning on the system too early.
Where many new home owners and those new to Colorado’s Bi-Polar weather patterns sometimes get “fooled” is the latter winter months of February and especially March. As all Colorado natives know, it’s nothing to have a beautiful sunny day with a high temperature in the 60’s or even 70’s during these months only to have a low temp the same evening of 32 and below. This is the Gotcha moment. Many people focus on the high temps and think it’s been so nice out, I’m going to fire up the sprinklers; forgetting the low temps that will freeze and destroy the system later that night. The good news is, that even though you can’t start the system up yet there are still plenty of things you can do right now to get off to early success and great looking lawn:
- Rake your yard – yes, raking sucks…there’s no way to sugar-coat it, however; leaves left on the lawn will absolutely destroy your lawn and you will have dead patches all over your lawn. This also helps break up all the dead grass and thatch that has built up over the off season.
- Inspect your sprinkler heads – trim the overgrowth from around the collars and check for obvious cracked parts, or damaged heads etc. A well trimmed sprinkler head serves many purposes:
- Easy to locate if adjustments are needed or repair
- Avoids the most common problem of sticky stems (Stems that pop up and don’t go down) this is often due to grass squeezing the stem constantly and then chokes the stem when it’s trying to go back down into the body.
- Helps identify problem areas of the lawn; for instance if you see an area struggling in your yard and starting to turn brown you can quickly view where the heads are in relation to the brown area, often times it’s a clogged nozzle or something very easy fix because you can see the head location in the yard
- Trim bushes/ trees – many times overgrown bushes and trees stop the water from getting to where it needs to go, your lawn. A good trim here goes a long way to ensure success in the yard
- Apply Pre-Emergent Crabgrass treatment – once the crabgrass germinates it cannot be killed without also killing your lawn. The time to kill it is before it germinates. A good time to apply is in March; if you wait until April and we have an early spring you may be too late
- Edge the lawn – This is a great time to to edge your lawn and give it that extra something; a nice clean cut manicured look. Even if your lawn doesn’t resemble a golf course, just having the edges trimmed can really add to the overall appearance of your lawn and make it look a whole lot nicer
Do these few things listed above and your off to great start. Don’t take the bait and turn the system on too early.
