DU Homeowners: Do you water your lawn?

[rbnyc]

I just received a message about water conservation in my county. We are being asked, due to high temperatures and lack of rain, not to water our lawns, hose down driveways and sidewalks, or wash our cars, and to consolidate our laundry and take other water conservation measures.

2 weekends ago, we had family visiting from California. I was showing one of them around our yard, with my MIL who lives near me. I was asked if we water our lawn. I said, "No. I think it's a waste of water and pure vanity to water the lawn. If there's not enough rain to keep it green, then it should be brown." I just said this reflexively and didn't consider that my MIL lives in a much more upscale suburb, has her sprinklers programed for regular watering and would be mortified to have a brown patch visible to neighbors. I wasn't trying to shame her. I just wasn't thinking about her and I said what I really think, which is my tendency for better or worse.

We do water our grape vines, fruit trees and garden. We eat what we grow.

Today's water advisory doesn't impact us much. We practice water conservation all the time anyway. I wonder if other folks will turn off their sprinklers.

Anyway, I was just curious about lawn-watering practices among DU homeowners.

[Ian David]

1. I only water my vegetable garden, and places where I just replanted bare patches of grass. n/t

[seabeckind]

23. Why the bare patches?

It's obvious it doesn't want to live there.

<on edit> I usually sprinkle some seed just before we come out of the rinse cycle. If it grows, ok. If not, there's always next week.

[Ian David]

28. I have groundhogs.

[muffin1]

2. We don't - our "lawn" is the woods.

I do, however, pet-sit for many middle to upper-class clients who have sprinklers. Tons of water being wasted...

[rbnyc]

17. Woods...

...sounds beautiful.

[muffin1]

24. Thanks...it really is.

Our house is super-small (760 square ft) and it sits at the edge of a hill. The deck in the back is raised - sorta like a beach house - and looks out over a very large, wooded area. Friends say it reminds them of a tree-house. :)

It was kinda scary during Hurricane Isabel, but we made it through in very good shape.

[FreakinDJ]

3. Why Not - LA gets all their water from here

so they can water golf courses

[ScreamingMeemie]

4. Clarification: I water my foundation.

I have drip line hoses at my foundation. In this kind of heat (Texas) and drought situation, your foundation will crack if you don't.


Edited because I was bitten by the your/you're monster.

[rbnyc]

8. No doubt.

:hi:

[tammywammy]

10. I have the same

Soaker hoses around my home on a timer.

I don't water my yard, I should as it looks like a bunch of it is dying off this year - including a crepe myrtle.

The problem is that people are over watering, you only need to water once a week.

edited to add: We have watering limits all year round. No watering between 10am - 6pm ever.

[XemaSab]

59. Stick the hose under the crepe myrtle for a few

Losing a tree isn't right. :(

[tammywammy]

81. Well, it's that pinkish/red kind

I'm actually not a fan of this particular one, where it's placement is. I'm willing to let this one go. I checked on the other one in my yard that it looks okay.

[66 dmhlt]

53. I water my foundation plants - 2 birds w/ 1 stone

[alfredo]

67. I do that here too during droughts.

[rucky]

5. Only when my daughter wants to play in the sprinklers. n/t

[rbnyc]

9. Oh yeah...

...we do that too. We have this weird little cartoon character sprinkler for the kids. We won't use it during the advisory, but we use it occaisionally during the summer.

[cbdo2007]

While I agree with you....that was kind of a rude response.

You should have just said, "No, it's not much of a priority for me but I'll get around to working on the yard more one of these years."

My yard looks nice for about 1 month during the spring. The rest of the year it's all dried up and brown, but we do our best giving our situation.

[rbnyc]

13. I agree.

Like I said, I just blurted out my unreserved thoughts and didn't think about how my MIL might feel until later. On one hand, that's a really bad proclivity because I don't want MIL to feel bad about herself. On the other hand, she and her rich neighbors are vain and wasting water and maybe she should think about it. I'm sure there's a more sensitive way to bring it up to her, however.

[pipi_k]

I have well water...

even so, I don't bother watering my lawn. Just the flowers in front of the house in planter boxes

[rbnyc]

14. I love planter boxes.

I don't have any, but I love seeing them.

[Cleita]

6. I don't have a lawn, but a small patio-like garden that I water.

Since most of my part of the land maintenance is a slope, I have planted it with natives and other drought tolerant plants that have to get all their water during the rainy season. Only in really dry years I might give it a good soaking once a month.

[XemaSab]

60. You have a picture?

:shrug:

I love xeriscapes! :D

[Cleita]

80. Actually, I can't.

First, the family requests I don't put up personal stuff like where we live on the internet and this would be part of it. Secondly, I really don't do computer picture stuff very well. But I can tell you I use manzanita and succulents a lot. I also like the lavenders and salvias.

[Historic NY]

7. Its not worth the trouble if your watering crab grass.....

[rbnyc]

15. LOL

Have you seen my yard?

[WorseBeforeBetter]

11. Never the grass, which I don't have much of. I planted native, drought-resistant..

trees/shrubs and water via the hose only if we're not getting rain and the 3 rain barrels are empty.

[gulliver]

12. I think it depends on where you live

If it is sustainable, then people should feel free to water their lawns as much as they want. I water enough to keep it from going brown and dying. That keeps the weeds out and helps keep the neighborhood looking nice. But I live in St. Louis. The Missouri and Mississippi aren't going dry any time soon.

[rbnyc]

16. good point. nt

[BNJMN]

21. And if you're selling. [nt]

[handmade34]

18. I always bitch

when I pass water sprinklers going in the middle of the day... watering grass, gardens, etc... is much more efficient in the evening or early morning as much is evaporated by the sun

[tammywammy]

20. You lose up to 30% of you water if you do it during the day

Due to evaporation and wind carrying it off.

[XemaSab]

62. Most plants aren't actively respiring in the middle of the day either

n/t

[shanti]

19. half and half

i water my front yard every few days so that it looks "respectable". the city hall yard nazis sent me a nastygram before about my front lawn, so now i'm more vigilant. my backyard sprinklers have been on the fritz for a couple of years, so i don't water the grass there at all. it looks terrible. i'm thinking of just bricking/cementing it all up anyway....

[supernova]

22. No, I'm on a well

So I conserve water for only those things that I need it for: cooking, washing, cleaning.

I used to have a large garden and we whould carry painters buckets of water up to the garden from the spigots. Ugh.

If you really must water your plants, you'd be better off with a cistern. I'm looking at having one myself so that I can water the new to be planted garden.

edit: I never water the grass. it's somewhere between green and brown, I'm looking inot planting more drought tolerant decorative plants, and not fussy things like roses.

[seabeckind]

25. Just encourages it

Then I have to cut it.

Then I have to feed it.

Then I have to water it again.

Better to let the guy in the sky decide if he/she wants grass there or something else.

[rbnyc]

31. LOL nt

[hfojvt]

26. water is never wasted

it goes back into the ground or into the air and then comes back as rain, or dew or fog.

It is the energy and chemicals used to purify it that would be wasted.

Where I live, the water department charges me for 1500 gallons even if I use much less. So I can water some without impacting my bill at all. If they are gonna charge me, then I am gonna try to get my money's worth. As hot and dry as it gets here, if I did not water, my trees might die. Not my grass - my trees. Not to mention my lilacs and butterfly bush. Usually I skip watering the grass, and between keeping it long and the shade it does all right. I water some these days just to reduce the fire danger a little bit. It has been exceptionally hot.

[Retrograde]

27. The front? No.

It's roses and lavender, which will last through the dry season without any extra water. The back "lawn", my prized 5X10' of grass that I've been trying to grow for two decades, about once a week. The vegetable garden gets watered via soaker hose under a thick straw mulch every other day.

When the business parks give up watering their expanses of grass (and the sidewalks, which is where the water usually ends up) I'll consider giving up my own grass.

[Lyric]

29. No, but we also don't need to. The climate is humid and we get lots of rain.

It's easy to be virtuous when you have no need to be otherwise.

[bigwillq]

30. We never water the lawn.

We do water the flowers and plants.

[AndyTiedye]

32. The Garden Has Been Taking Over the "Lawn"

We have been doubling the size of garden each of the last 3 years.
There's not much lawn left (and we never watered that anyway).

We do water the garden, of course. We have a rain barrel and will
be getting more of them. That helps reduce the amount of tap water
needed considerably. We do get quite a bit of coastal fog, even in
the summer.

[Speck Tater]

33. That would be pointless. It's always raining where I live. nt

[taterguy]

34. Why only ask homeowners? Most renters of single-family dwellings are responsible for the lawn

As usual, the non-propertied class gets marginalized.

[rbnyc]

50. Since my 38 years of living in rentals and apartments, I never...

...had to take care of a lawn, I didn't think of that.

I honestly didn't mean to marginalize anyone, especially since I'm the first person in my family to ever have the privilege of having a mortgage. I grew up in a household earning the equivellent in today's dollars of $15,600 a year.

It is possible to expand a person's point of view and point out that their not-fully-thought-out words can contribute to the marginalization of people in a somewhat nicer way. It's important that I understand your point, but it's really hard not to be defensive because of the way you said it.

EDIT: typo

[TorchTheWitch]

97. if you rent property that has an exclusive yard it's the renter's responsibility

to do the regular normal maintenance just the same as the interior of the property. The only time that a renter would not have to have the responsibility of caring for a yard/driveway/walkway, etc. is if it is shared property. Often landlords still make it the responsibility of the tenants of shared outdoor property to do the regular maintenance and leave it to the tenants to work it out between themselves who does what. This is usually a bad idea since it's normally inevitable that one tenant will end up doing the most work and incurring the most expense which leads to animosity between the tenants as well as toward the landlord.

Years ago I rented an apartment in a converted Victorian house of two apartments that had a huge shared lawn and loooooooong driveway. I always ended up being the one to do most snow shoveling, leaf raking, grass cutting, etc. because the other tenant (who was an absolute asshole) refused to do practically anything. I constantly complained to the landlord about this but he just kept insisting that we had to work it out between ourselves. I will NEVER make the mistake of getting into another situation like that ever again.

Very few landlords are so generous as to not make an exclusive yard of the renter the renter's responsibility. Why should they take on that expense and work when they don't have to?

[Gormy Cuss]

100. Where I live it's standard for the landlord to hire someone to care for the yard.

Probably because that's easier than fielding the requests from neighbors and municipal authorities. One big reason is that dead plant material must be cleared out before fire season.

[rbnyc]

102. I just didn't think about renting houses, or units with yards.

Now I feel really stupid about it. I always lives in apartment complexes with either no yard or shared courtyards, or in apartment buildings in the city with no yard. I remember being little and climbing out onto the roof of our apartment building and looking at the single-family homes that surrounded the apartment complex and wondering what it would be like to be one of those families. I created a fundamental impression when I was very young that was kind of narrow. Poor renters in tenements and the like and rich homeowners. Sometimes we don't realize how these fundamental impressions still creep in to the way we frame things when we're older.

[Marrah_G]

35. We have very little grass

mostly just food, some flowers and bamboo around the pool.

[quaker bill]

36. By leaving it dry

the yard has become well established with drought tolerant native grasses and forbs. I don't feed it and I don't water it, but I do cut it often enough to avoid code violations. It is all green, kinda looks like grass, and unless you are a botanist (I am) you probably don't see all that much difference.

[XemaSab]

63. Any pictures?

What species?

[Gormy Cuss]

37. In most of CA, there's no rain in the summer. You on the other hand can expect rain.

I realize that in recent years there have been very dry seasons but the climate expectation is that you will have rain during the growing season. In much of CA, summer lawns die without irrigation. Lawn watering consumes lots of water here and that's why there's been decades-long efforts to get people to replace lawn either with new low water use grasses or with xeric landscaping. Even in areas where people are hanging on to those large lawns the push is to replace timer-based sprinkler systems with "smart" systems that respond to real weather conditions and water based on an estimate of need.

In the Northeast it's a no-brainer. Shut off the water to lawn when you need to conserve water. Your lawn may turn brown but so will the neighbors, and the grass will rebound when it rains.

[Safetykitten]

38. Rock, front and back.

[xchrom]

39. i took my lawn out & put in mulch. nt

[dionysus]

40. when it's hot like this i do. but i use city water and live next to one of the great lakes

we don't have shortages.

if i relied on a well, i wouldn't water.

[CaptRandom]

41. lol.. this reminds me of a south park episode...

the episode with the prius

[Gman]

42. I water the hell out of it. And it's about the best looking yard on the street

I also fertilize and use insecticides with the fertilizer. Damn good looking yard, it is.

[seabeyond]

43. i watered when we had rain helping. now we are only watering to keep alive, not green. nt

[GoCubsGo]

44. Yes, only because...

I am getting ready to put it up for sale. I have to sell it, because after Sept. 1, I will have no means to pay for it. And, under the current circumstances, I'll need all the "curb appeal", etc., that I can get. Especially since the house next door is also up for sale.

On edit: My back yard is all pine needles, so no need to water there. Some idjit tried growing Bermuda grass on a wooded lot. In the front yard, the neighbor's centipede grass has been encroaching over the years. It's finally taking over the Bermuda grass, which only seems to want to grow in the cracks in the street asphalt. Go figure.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

45. My whole yard has been turned into a garden.

I don't have any lawn (turf grass) any more. The garden, which includes a lot of native plants, is watered by a drip irrigation system that uses way less water than conventional sprinklers. Although it has been very hot here lately, it's also rained quite a bit (torrentially, on occasion), so water conservation hasn't been a big issue this year, but I still prefer to keep my water bill to a minimum. All the rain has kept my rain barrel nicely replenished, so I use that water when I can. Also, maintaining a nice, green, smooth, golf-course-like lawn requires a lot of chemicals, which I'd prefer to avoid.

[HopeHoops]

46. The vegetable and herb beds get watered twice a day - they feed us.

The lawn is doing just fine. Curiously, all of the BROWN yards are the ones people spend who knows how much money to have various companies spread poisons all over them. They're burnt out, probably from the nitrogen. Ours is one of the only green yards, and sure a lot of it is dandylions and clover, but even the grass is green. Watering grass is simply a waste.

[Throd]

47. Northern California. I replaced my lawn with rock and drought tolerant plants last year.

Saving mucho dinero.

[mnhtnbb]

48. We don't have grass--all naturalized--but bushes/trees/perennials were planted

this spring on the lot where we finished rebuilding from house that burned down 4 years ago so if we don't water them as needed (I do it by hand) we'll lose them until
they are established enough to survive only on rain. That means watering as needed for probably
2-3 years.

[Name removed]

49. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[rbnyc]

51. TOO late to edit: Should have addressed "People responsible for lawns" not Homeowners.

I guess I'm just exposing myself as a thoughtless, inconsiderate asshole all over the place.

I'm really, really, truly very sorry.

[pitohui]

52. no i don't water my lawn, that only encourages it!!! EOM

,

[Nye Bevan]

54. Yes, unless there's a water shortage or advisory, in which case I don't (nt)

[NightWatcher]

55. we only water the plants with rainwater from our rain barrels

[rbnyc]

57. We need to get on that.

We keep saying we're going to set up rain barrels and we never get to it.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

56. We are seriously considering pulling up the entire front and back yards...

...sanding and adding rocks and desert plants. Oklahoma had just become far too hot. And we no longer have a lawn mower. Some one recently broke into our garage and stole it. So water would just be stupid and counterproductive.
Duckie

[XemaSab]

64. Do some research into natives

I bet you could have something lush-looking and pretty with very little water.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

90. Yep. It'll be like the prairie with prairie grasses and prickly pears.

Seriously.
Duckie

[Tesha]

58. We water. Our water comes from surface (pond) water and right now, it's plentiful.

We get our water from the municipal supply system and they
get the water from a series of ponds fed by a small river.
This year (and for the past several years), there's been plenty
so there's no issue with us watering. The only ecological cost
is the energy cost of providing the water and the chemicals
used to treat the water.

A rain sensor disables our sprinklers whenever there's been
"enough" rain lately and we usually keep things throttled-
down to the minimum required to maintain "mostly green".

Years where there hasn't been enough water for the utility,
we've programmed the sprinklers to match whatever the water
ban specifies; our sprinkler controller is very flexible. But the
change in climate seems to be making at least our part of
New England wetter, so there's been plentiful surface water.
The towns that use water from deep-rock wells haven't been
so lucky.

Tesha

[BobbyBoring]

61. I HATE mowing sooooooooooooo

No, I don't. That's been the only plus of the drought we're having~

[davsand]

79. I was afraid I was the only person to feel that way!

I absolutely HATE to mow and I kinda look forward to late July or August when the grass usually stops growing and dries up.




Laura

[ohheckyeah]

65. No way do I water.

We live in the country on 1 1/2 acres so it would be futile. We have a small stream on the property that originates in an underground spring so parts of the property stay pretty well hydrated.

[alfredo]

66. Only if sprouting grass seed. I try to plant on the eve of

a several day rain event.

Weed control: plant a lot of grass.

[Wait Wut]

68. Other...we don't have a lawn.

We live in the high desert, so our "lawn" is all natural. Sand, rock and natural vegetation, plus a few trees including a peach tree. We water the trees. I do know a few homes in the area that have planted grass and they water. It makes me sick. Water shortage is a HUGE issue where we live. You move to Arizona, keep it natural. If you live in the midwest, your grass will be watered naturally.

Although, when the grandkids come out, we do turn on the sprinkler for them.

[End Of The Road]

69. I water the backyard, but I'm trying to kill the grass in the front

so that I can plant a drought-tolerant native Texas blend that will need much less watering and mowing.

I was planning on seeding it this spring, but I'm glad I didn't. Chances of success are slim in this heat and drought.

I've got my fingers crossed for next spring. In the meantime, I really don't care if the front yard looks like shit.

[XemaSab]

73. Would seeding in fall work better there?

/don't know much about Texas

[tammywammy]

84. What kind of seed are you going to put down?

[End Of The Road]

87. It's a mixture of Buffalo and Blue Grama

I'm getting it from Native American Seed in Junction, TX, and it's a mix they call Sunturf. It's only supposed to need watering about once a month (though it will love more), and doesn't get grossly overgrown like some xeriscape covers. The pictures I've seen seem to indicate that it will look fine as a typical suburban lawn when mowed.

[tammywammy]

92. I'll check into that.

Sounds good.

[marlakay]

70. We have irrigation water and a well

it was in our papers to buy the property that we have to pay for irrigation water yearly whether we use it or not...it comes from rain melt and we only have the water 5 months. So yes we water with that.

But that said....we don't waste water...we don't leave it running. We recycle everything we can even though they don't pick up, we save and bring to larger town center when we do errands. We drive scooter in summer that gets 100mph. We don't leave lights on, we open windows at night and very rarely use air conditioner.

If we lived in the city as many of our friends do we would have landscape of just rocks and bushes no lawn.

[XemaSab]

71. I totally water

Front yard:

A few years ago I decided I wanted to start planting California native plants. I got my friend to draw up a design for me and I spent $$$$$$$$$$ on beautiful natives. Several of them died because Redding in summer is hotter and drier than Southern California, and several of them died because we have riverbottom soils and Redding in winter gets as much rain as Eureka so the plants rotted out.

I decided to accept the things I cannot change, so last year I planted native riparian species in the shady area in front of the house and this year I planted some mixed native and non-native xeric plants out by the street. So far everything is holding on, but it all needs water to keep it happy. (I water about once a week, and I'm hoping that next year I can step down the watering by the street to once every other week.)

Back yard:

I've got LOADS of xeriscape plants back there, and I am scheming to overseed the lawn with red fescue or something else that doesn't take much water. I am also thinking about putting in soaker hoses for the borders so we don't waste water on grass in the back where it's just a weed. As it is, the lawn (and other plants) get watered about once a week.

The blessing of the riverbottom soils is that the big trees are all tapped into the groundwater, so I can experiment with watering regimes without worrying about killing anything big.

Here's the back yard in May of this year:



In this picture everything is green from rainwater, except for the brown patches which are Bermuda Grass that hasn't come out of dormancy. You can see exactly how worried I am about having a perfect lawn. :P

So the long and the short of it is that I totally water about once a week during the summer. I figure the extra water just goes down into the Sacramento River. You're welcome, people downstream. :)

[rbnyc]

74. Your back yard is beautiful.

I love it.

[XemaSab]

77. Thank you

:D

[End Of The Road]

75. Absolutely. Gorgeous.

[XemaSab]

76. Thanks

:D

[Taverner]

72. I do, but it doesn't take much

Trickle lines have been good for the lawn

[csziggy]

78. We water the grass just enough to keep it alive

So that usually only means once or twice a year. For us the main reason for grass around the house is to keep an open area in case of a wildfire and to keep the soil in place.

The grass we have is centipede that pretty much grew wild in our pastures. The crew that did the final grading around the new house rented a sod cutter and cut the sod for around the house in the lower pastures. Now that it is established it handles drought pretty good but when the roots are getting crunchy dry, it's time to water.

Usually about the time we get the hoses and sprinklers all set up, the drought breaks and we get some good rain, making all the effort to water a little silly. I think it is a form of sympathetic magic - if you have just watered it will rain.

[hobbit709]

82. Whatever grows in my yard has adapted to TX summers.

The St. Augustine grass has long vanished. What has survived is several varieties of native grass. It turns brown in the heat and dry, when it rains it turns green again in a day or two.

[a la izquierda]

83. I only water my veggies and plants.

With the terrible drought we're under, watering is wasteful and a lost cause. However, I do have to water my weeping willow...it's really suffering.

I can't wait to own a home, so I can naturescape.

[Blue_In_AK]

85. Most of my yard has been turned into garden

vegetables and flowers, and I do water those things. The little bit of grass, not so much, but we don't have water issues up here anyway.

[pintobean]

86. Sometimes, I water my house.

No, I don't expect it to turn green and grow. When the temps get into the upper 90s, cooling the brick is the only way the a/c can catch up.

[NMMNG]

88. Never

We live in a drought-prone area and wouldn't dream of wasting water on the lawn.

[TorchTheWitch]

89. since this is the first time I attempted to grow grass on my dirt patch

this year, yes. I didn't haul and spread around 53 bags of topsoil and spend days and days cultivating grass seeds to let it all go to shit by not watering it. Now, for the first time since I moved in here 6 or so years ago I actually HAVE grass on my dirt and can enjoy the yard I pay to have and don't have to worry about the dog or me tracking gobs of mud into the house every time it rains or snow melts. I still have some bald patches I'll have to re-seed, but for the most part I actually HAVE a lawn for once. After this season when it finally gets established I won't be watering it unless it starts to die from lack of rain. Again, I didn't go through all this back breaking work and expense to watch it all die from lack of water. I've paid for and had to live with nothing but a dirt patch that was far more trouble than it was worth and unusable for anything but a place for the dog to go to the bathroom far too damn long, and after all this work and expense I'll be damned if I'll let it all die.

The front yard always had grass, and since it's nothing but a grassy steep slope you can't do anything with it but mow it anyway. But yes, if the grass in the front yard started to die from lack of water I'd water it because lawn care is just as much a part of my rental agreement as the care of the inside of the house, and it would hardly be fair to my neighbors if I let my lawn go to shit and let the place become a crappy looking eyesore because I'm either too lazy or too cheap to take care of the lawn. My crazy next door neighbors have let their backyard become a garbage dump overgrown with patches of knee high grass and weeds in between the junk and trash and letting the baby pool sit half deflated and scummy with standing water breeding a mosquito farm and dozens of huge dog poop piles they don't bother to pick up and I have to smell. I finally called the township on them. Fucking disgusting pigs.

Man, I HATE these damn people. I'm sick to death of their perpetual domestic violence, their screaming undisciplined brat of a kid, their perpetually barking dog, their drugs and drinking and mooching off everyone when they have more income than practically all of us put together, and now just starting this year they're doing their damnedest to pig up their yard as disgustingly as possible to boot. Last spring they actually drew graffiti on their OWN HOUSE! WHAT THE FUCK??? It's still there. Jebus Crispies... who the hell paints graffiti on their OWN HOUSE??? Anymore I just don't give a rat's ass if they kill each other as long as somebody gets their bodies out before the smell gets into my place. ANY other neighbor living there but them couldn't possibly be as bad as these people.

To those people that are too lazy or too cheap to take care of their property, GO LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE. There are plenty of eyesore neighborhoods where people don't give a shit about their property and they look it and smell it... don't move that attitude into MY tidy attractive neighborhood. I pay a shit load more money to live in a nice neighborhood where people take care of their properties, and I'll be damned if I'll ignore people moving here and crapping it up like the foul pigs next door. It's thanks to people like that that all manner of bugs inside and outside have swarmed in and now we even have fucking rats all over the place. When you treat your property like a garbage dump you're also treating your neighbors to the eyesore, the smell and the vermin. FUCK THAT. Go live in a crappy, ugly, smelly, vermin infested neighborhood where your laziness, cheapness and piggish habits will fit right in. DON'T BRING IT HERE.

[Raine]

91. I live in Los Angeles County I rarely water

the grass, maybe once a week at night. My neighbor waters his every single morning with an automatic timer. Honestly his lawn doesn't look much more than a fraction better than mine. :shrug:

[Vidar]

93. What-- and have to mow it even more often???

[Cool Logic]

94. Never...doing that would require mowing the grass more often.

[noamnety]

95. I water the veggie garden.

I never do the lawn. Every now and then the husband sneaks out and waters the square above the septic tank but if I lived here alone I sure the heck wouldn't bother with it. It's such a small square though it's not worth the marriage fight to bring it up.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

96. veggies and some flowers, yes. grass, no.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

98. I water some of the flowers and plants/shrubs specifically, NOT the lawn. n/t

[Nailzberg]

99. No lawn.

I gotta get a house, I'm missing out on valuable hanging-in-the-backyard time.

[OswegoAtheist]

101. I don't use municipal water, but...

there's little chance of a shortage when you live on the shore of a Great Lake. I use what the hydrological cycle gave me, every other week.

Oswego "and I don't have a lawn, per se; I do maintenance on my apartment complex over the summer break" Atheist

[Lugnut]

103. We only water what we can eat.

Grass doesn't qualify as a food crop. Tomatoes and cucumbers do.

[Violet_Crumble]

104. We've had water restrictions for years...

They're permanent now.

http://www.actew.com.au/Water%20Restrictions%20and%20Saving%20Water/Permanent%20Water%20Conservation%20Measures.aspx

I no longer have a lawn seeing I moved to a townhouse with a paved courtyard, but my old lawn was shit anyway, so the only thing I missed was being able to sit under the sprinkler on really hot days and being able to wash my car...

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

105. Yes, but I want to rip it out.

If I ever live full-time in my home in California again I am going to remove the whole works, the assholes waiting for the bus are destroying it by using it as a toilet, shortcut, garbage can and ashtray anyways.

[Sheepshank]

106. we have two water systems

Municipal culinary water that is treated, purified, fluoridated etc. And we also have irrigation water that is untreated run off from the surrounding mountain winter snow melt. A series of canals and ducts that move the water towards the Great Salt Lake. During huge snow seasons there are no restrictions. Unused water merely ends up in the Great Salt Lake if not used. If there is not enough irrigation water, the system is simply shut off and then one decides whether to use culinary water or not. We've never been put into that situation. Irrigation water is great for lawns but has enough saline in it that it is tough on many plants and shrubs. Works fine for drip on gardens. Not every area here has irrigation water though, so we consider ourselves lucky.

[X_Digger]

107. Never have, never will.

That also means we don't have to mow and waste more gas in mowers and trimmers. Our lot is an acre, so that's a lot of savings in water, gas, and aggravation.

[REP]

108. We don't have much grass on our lot

Our house is in the mountains in a high risk for burn area (in a redwood forest) in an area that's in drought six or months a year. Most of our 15,000+ sqft lot is landscaped in low-water use ways, but it does need occasional waterings during drought season, just for safety's sake. I've always hated boring grass yards and water waste, so I was really happy that this landscaping needed very little changing.

I water my orchids with a hand-pumped sprayer and the runoff goes to other plants. The only plants I hose water regularly are the roses and the fuchsias.

[B Calm]

109. I love golden brown grass. But then I mow approx. 5 acres.

[melm00se]

110. i have 400 gallons

of rain barrels. when I water, I use those coupled with a couple of low pressure sprinklers.

but in this heat, I let my fescue law go dormant and it'll bounce back in the fall once it cools down