If you find that your lawn dries out quickly and needs more frequent watering than other lawns in your neighborhood, there are ways to minimize waterings.

1. Keeping your grass relatively tall will help the plants reduce moisture evaporation by shading the soil.

2. If you choose native grasses or those well adapted to your area when seeding, they will need less watering. For example, Blue grass is a guzzler; Buffalograss is not.

3. Improving your soil can also help reduce your watering needs. Try top dressing your soil with organic material. Then work it into the soil using an aerator (with a core cultivator). Organic material helps your soil hold water longer.

4. In addition, aeration promotes deeper root growth. When combined with infrequent, deep waterings, aeration enables grass plants to take moisture from a greater soil area.

5. Don't use chemicals. Organic lawns require less watering than chemically treated lawns.

6. Use a sharp mower blade to make cleaner cuts. Cleanly cut lawns look greener and cause less evaporation than raggedly cut lawns.

7. Do not overfertilize.

8. Allow your lawn to temporarily brown out, or go dormant, when drought conditions persist. Usually this will not hurt a healthy, established lawn because the roots continue to live and are ready to send forth new shoots when conditions improve. There may be times during the year when it's just not worth trying to keep your lawn green (but continue to water lawns less than a year old through dry spells.)

9. If you have an automatic sprinkler system, check for consistency of coverage. Uneven coverage often causes homeowners to overwater some areas in order to adequately water others.

10. If you water your lawn manually, invest in a timer (either built into the sprinkler or installed at the outdoor faucet). With a timer, you can't forget to turn off the sprinkler. The flip side to using programmable timers, however, is that they turn on the system rain or shine. There's nothing more wasteful than sprinklers watering during a heavy rainstorm. In-ground systems with soil or weather sensors avoid that problem.