David's (dchall) montra - deep and infrequent watering. Grow the roots deeper, make them chase that water.

I agree with deep and infrequent but I think it will only take you so far. The depth of the roots depends on how long you let the grass grow too, and with constant mowing to 3.5 inches, plus other stresses like herbicides, traffic, pre-emergent etc., I just don't see roots ever going deeper that 12 inches in your average lawn, and 12" would be a most fortunate case. Most people it's 4"-6". I'd like a way to tap into deep water - 24 to 36 inches.

Deep & infrequent will help. A vertidrain or other deep solidtine aerator would be a more efficient method for making holes though. They use a similar process to what you suggest in Europe on soccer fields, it's called deso turf I think. They use synthetic fibers lime nylon because it's really meant to reduce wear & tear on their rye fields, but same concepts apply to get water down to their root zones on compacted turf as trying to get water up to the root zone on our native soil bases. I'm not sure it would make much difference in a home lawn & it's a lot of work, but I love ideas like these. My soil drains agonizingly slow, so I've considered drilling deep holes like you talked about & filling with gravel, then topping with sand. Like a miniature version of my putting green soil profile.

For what it's worth:

On another forum one of the mods was experimenting with repeated (and repeated and repeated) shampoo treatments. As fate would have it a wind storm broke a piece of a tree off and it landed in his yard. He needed to jack the tree piece out because it had embedded itself 24 inches deep. With that in mind, I would try repeated apps of shampoo.

Morph has demonstrated on his lawn that excessive amounts of surfactants does not seem to harm the grass or microbes. He's a soap hobbyist and uses a special concoction of surfactants much like those that go into shampoo, but his own custom blend. I believe he used the shampoo equivalent of 50 ounces per week for many weeks.

Soap hobbyist. Bravo morph for the most unique hobby I've heard in a long time! Where does he find the time?!

----- Moved from wrong thread -----------

danielj_2009(6b)

I think understanding more about capillary action is probably important in this situation. If the soil can't draw up the water then why can nylon? My personal gut feeling is even if you could wick up some moisture it wouldn't be enough to matter.

I know capillary action in sandy soils is poor because the space between the particles is too large. I don't fully understand how cloth materials wick water - possibly because of the very small spaces between fibers - but I think the potential to bring up moisture is significant as illustrated here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO-zGA_DSW0

On a side note, I just realized why there was water on the floor next to the mop bucket this morning, the mop was left in the water with a few strands hanging off the side.

50 oz was the total, not the per thousand square foot. I've...well, let's just say I've never gone past about 6 per K every 2 weeks or so and if you don't call me a liar then I got away with it. Suffice to add that it's the highest I'd ever recommend that somebody go in the gardens.

Yes, my concoction is special home brew, but shampoo off the shelf is just fine! I haven't bought a soap product--bar, shampoo, hand, kitchen, laundry, or cleaning item--in longer than I can remember as I make all of them myself.

morph, so you weren't just pouring shampoo straight on the lawn ;-) thanks for clearing that up for me. What about car soap??? -just kidding. I'm going to use baby shampoo.

Back to the subject, if you have a moist layer down deeper, you might have a clayish layer keeping the surface moisture and bottom moisture from mixing. Auguring holes down through that layer might be helpful.