Watering For the Cheap and Lazy?

so the cheap and lazy lawncare page starts out saying: Water only when your grass shows signs of drought stress and then water deeply (put a cup in your sprinkler zone and make sure it gets at least an inch of water), right?

spring is coming and i'm starting to think, "what are signs of drought stress?"

another post on lawn watering says something like, "...only when it needs it..."

and i'm thinking, "when does it need it?"

so mow at 4 inches and then water it when? how much? wait 45 minutes huh?

If you step on your grass, and you can still see the footprint 30 minutes later, the grass is stressed -- no resiliance.

I've used an empty tuna can to measure how much water my grass is getting. It has straight sides (not sloped like many containers) and it's easy to see how much water is in the can.

For a second I thought "I sure write lame articles if I left that out!" - so I went and checked to see what I did say.  It's there!  Look at "Two methods to tell when it is time to water:"

The "how much" for water is generally "one inch" although if your soil is really shallow, you might as well water less.

dude your articles are NOT lame. this is simply the best website in the whole world wide web for lawn dummies like me. and i get a DUH by not checking back to the article. i got carried away reading every single post on the bb. so sorry about the duh and thanks for this website.

i'm all charged up because the cook county illinios' extension office sent me my soil test kit this week. booyah! i'm off to the races. and i told both my neighbors that we're setting the mower we share on high this summer.