"When should I water my yard?" "How much water should I apply?" These are common questions asked by many businesses and homeowners as they begin watering landscapes in response to current drought conditions,.
Landscape irrigation can account from 50 to 80 percent of water used in a home during the spring and summer. Unfortunately, most of this is wasted due to inefficient watering practices.
To eliminate some of the irrigation scheduling guesswork, High Plains Underground Water Conservation District (HPWD) sponsors the WaterMyYard program, phone app, and website for use by Lubbock County residents. There is no charge for the service.
WaterMyYard is a program of Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service and is conducted in partnership with cities, public utilities, and water districts.
“The WaterMyYard website application and phone app takes the guesswork out of irrigating your yard,” said Charles Swanson, AgriLife Extension landscape specialist at College Station. “It uses scientific data obtained from weather stations to determine how much water plants need, based upon local climate and other factors.”
Persons can visit www.hpwd.org/watermyyard to sign up for the program. Subscribers receive a weekly notification of the amount of water needed for their landscape, based upon the weather station data.
HPWD’s Lubbock County weather station is located in the City of Wolfforth. The station records evapotranspiration rates, total rainfall, average maximum and minimum temperature, total solar radiation, and average daily wind speed at 4 a.m. and 4 p.m. A seven-day weather summary for the Lubbock site is available at https://texaset.tamu.edu/DataSummary/Daily/169
This is the second year that HPWD has sponsored the program. This is a pilot program in Lubbock County. If successful, WaterMyYard may be implemented as a water conservation tool in other parts of the 16-county HPWD service area.
Water My Yard started in response to the severe 2011 drought across Texas. Currently, there are more than 27,000 subscribers to the program across the state.