Arizona Grass Seasons

I live in arizona and it is typical here to rotate between Bermuda grass in the summer months and Rye grass the rest of the year. I am wondering how the Rachio would handle this type of cycle? I normally overseed the rye in October, during which time watering would need to be heavily increased, until the seeds take. Once the weather gets hotter, normally in April/May, the rye dies off and the Bermuda comes out of its hibernation. Are there settings in the scheduling to account for these changes, or do I just need to go in and change the grass type in the settings for the different seasons?

Thanks!

@aaronlhx82, great question. Currently, you would need to manually change the zone attributes seasonally. We do not have an automated way to manage this. Will brainstorm this to see if I can think of any workarounds. How many zones does this affect on your schedule?

Thanks, Emil

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My grass is broken up into 4 zones. Sometimes I wonder why I couldn’t be on a single zone, but that was the way they set it up when the house was built. Half the grass does tend to get more sun, so that may be a reason to run the sprinklers a bit longer.

I don’t really worry about changing the grass type twice a year, as that’s not a huge deal. However upping the watering frequency and duration for a short period when I overseed has always been a bit of a pain, it is always a balancing act between keeping the seeds and grand damp, and overwattering and washing the seeds off.

I wonder if there could be a setting for when you put down new seeds, that would last for two weeks, and then start lowering the frequency as the seeds begin to take.

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@aaronlhx82, assuming all of the nozzles are the same and this is the main difference between the zones, it’s quite possible this is why the zones were laid out as designed. Sometimes low water pressure can lead to smaller zone layout as well.

We’ll be exposing the crop coefficient in the 2.5 app release within the advanced zone settings. You could increase the coefficient and/or decrease MAD during the establishment phase of the seeding to meet the watering needs of the seed, then walk the values back over a 3-4 week period.

Let me know your thoughts to this work around.

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