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We Are The Conservation Solution

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 21, 2008

Walking my wife's puppy upward of 50 miles a week affords me a unique view of several nearby neighborhoods.

I know where both mean dogs live, and I know when the psychotic cat is likely to strike. I'm very familiar with 12 streets and about 250 houses. I can tell who is remodeling, who needs to, who loves to garden and who couldn't care less.

There's another detail that's increasingly self-evident: There's a drought on, and the amount of water being wasted is nothing short of criminal.

Hillsborough County has the following rule in place: "Irrigation of established lawns and landscaping in unincorporated Hillsborough County is allowed one day a week. Follow the watering schedule outlined in the chart below."

People are cheating big time. Some water three, four, five days a week. It's bad enough they're straining the system, but what they don't realize is that they're also making it worse for themselves.

I almost never run my sprinkler, and in the long run I'm better off. First - and I'll admit I'm cheap - have you seen what automatic sprinkling does to the water bill? Next, and there's good science to back this up, too-frequent watering causes problems that indigenous plants were never meant to experience.

Most everything that grows in my garden - including the Bahia grass - is native to this part of Florida. The vegetation is genetically familiar with the vagaries of local weather. Things may look stressed during a dry spell, but they come back when it rains.

Frequent and shallow watering, on the other hand, especially when nonnative plantings demand extra help, cultivates weak root systems with little tenacity and scant ability to recover. When the coddling goes away, these gardens quickly revert to wastelands.

One homeowner dropped huge money for new St. Augustine sod. Rules allow daily watering the first 30 days, but his system couldn't keep up. His yard looked better than mine for two months at best. Today, he'd like his native grass back and his money, too.

We can blame developers, government and the drought all we want, but there's a lot we can do by taking responsibility at home.

Columnist Derek Maul can be reached at derekmaul@gmail.com.

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