I pretty much water on demand as stated by j4c11. It takes more work and you have to pay attention but it has worked for me.

Lawniac: Do not water unless your grass is showing signs of drought stress. This means that you may only need to water once a month in the spring, or not at all in the fall. This accounts for all weather and lawn condition – if the lawn is stressed it’s time to water, be it every 3 days in the summer or once a month in the fall.

What are signs of drought stress?

The grass turns a greyish color, like this:

For clarification; do I wait until I see drought stress as shown in the picture above before I apply 1" of water?

And is waiting for sign(s) of drought stress the method that is followed on a continuous basis going forward?

For example; after a year or two after the deep root system is developed.

Is it possible to go applying 1" of water once a week, adjusting for rainfall?

Thanks

Would it be accurate to say that now is an important time to irrigate if showing any sign of stress, in order to give the turf (bluegrass anyway) more time to optomize fall root development and tillering? Need to mow today for example and it is showing a little bit of wilting in some areas.

do I wait until I see drought stress as shown in the picture above before I apply 1" of water?

Yes. You wait until you see that and water.

And is waiting for sign(s) of drought stress the method that is followed on a continuous basis going forward?

Yes. You may only have to water once a month or not at all, depending on temperatures and rainfall. If there's no drought stress, it's got enough water.

Is it possible to go applying 1" of water once a week, adjusting for rainfall?

It's going to vary, might be every 3 days during a hot summer or once a month in the fall.

If you have a plugger or a post hole digger you should pull a plug of grass to see how deep your roots go currently. If they're all shallow ( 1"-2") then water 0.5" at a time to start, the deeper water will be wasted since it's well below the roots. Then slowly increase the water quantity to 1".

Would it be accurate to say that now is an important time to irrigate if showing any sign of stress, in order to give the turf (bluegrass anyway) more time to optomize fall root development and tillering? Need to mow today for example and it is showing a little bit of wilting in some areas.

If it's showing signs of wilting and drought stress it's time to water, regardless of what time of the year it is. Drop 1" of water and wait for it to show signs of drought stress before watering again.

Well - put another way, it's my understanding that fall is when most root development and tillering occurs with KBG. Consequently, any additional water in the form of irrigation would be beneficial?

I would think rooting hormones, kelp extracts, fish fertilizers & other known bio-stimulants would be more efficient than water at encouraging rooting & tillering.

I believe there are posting which people have used tuna cans to measure the 1" output from their irrigation systems.

But I don't remember the placement pattern of the cans.

I thought it was like 2', 6' and 8' from each sprinkler head and between heads that may over-lap; does that sound right?????

Please assist..

Thanks

That sounds right if you have enough cans