So I decided that today I was going to flip back over to warm season grass after an awesome winter rye grass season. Amazingly, the rye is just now starting to show signs of stress!
Anyway, I switched things over, and I’m a little startled at the run times scheduled now. Rachio wants to put down 1" of water, and my Hunter MP Rotator nozzles are putting down .55"/hr, so schedule is running each zone for 1h50m! Last year my zones were running for about an hour each. I did make one change this winter to clay loam, from sandy loam after I rechecked my soil with the recommended website. Other than that, I don’t think there were any other changes…
Would the change from sandy loam to clay loam make that much of a difference!? I will say that it does seem as though it is going to water less frequently than it did, but I honestly can’t remember back to this point last year…
Also, what do others have their established Bermuda root depth set to? Mine is 9" which worked well last year…
I started warm season settings a couple weeks ago and started it at 6"… no particular reason, I think I went to 9" last year, maybe I’ll eventually do that.
What do you guys use for crop coefficient for Bermuda? I know I end up at 9" for root depth, but I’m thinking I’ll start at 6" and creep up to 9". It worked out fine last year, but I don’t remember my progression. I need to write it down this year.
Mine is set to 65%, which I think is standard…
I let the schedule run for the 1h50m per zone to see what it did (run time was over 12 hours!) I didn’t have any flooding or anything, but I was kind of expecting to see longer than 5 days between waterings. Moisture graphs are already showing 40% after throwing down 1" of water on 4/30…
Here are my zones right now, please feel free to give me any feedback!
AW - .2
Root Depth - 9"
AD - 50%
Efficiency - 80%
Crop Coefficient - 65%
Nozzle in/hour - .6"
Clay Loam (per “the” website)
My AW is 0.12, but that difference could be real and I believe would have me watering more frequently than you. It would also have you watering more deeply. My PR is 0.4" but that should only mean my cycles are longer.
I’m currently set to 6" and am starting to move to 9" over the next few weeks. With the 6" setting, I put down 0.36" on 4/26, 4/29, 4/30 & 5/2
