Well water and lawns

lrodptl – posted 19 October 2008 14:23

Can the iron in well water be detrimental to turfgrass?

Alex_in_FL – posted 14 February 2009 13:36

Unlikely – unless the iron is extremely high. I mean extremely high not just high. The grass may look a bit brown due to the iron oxidizing (rusting) whil sitting on the grass.

cohiba – posted 16 February 2009 10:59

I agree. The iron is not in a form that the plant can utilize (my opinion). Iron uptake is so fast in turf that the lawn would be dark green within a few hours of irrigation.

Conversely, my brother in law plumbed the irrigation after his water softener(to try to keep the iron stains off his house). It worked for his house but the lawn started looking “anemic”.

We replumbed to irrigate with the straight well water. Applied gypsum and watered thoroughly. After a few days of drying out we applied fertilizer and rewatered. What a difference. Unfortunately, he now gets rust stains on the house.

My two cents.