I went through the soil survey like the guide says and came up with silty loam and an available water capacity of .20. My question is does it matter all that much what soil type I pick since there is no option for this soil type as long as I have the AWC entered correctly?
The soild type will determine how well the soil retains or loses water. A clay will act like a sponge, while Sand will be like a tea strainer.
So rather than messing about with the crop co-efficient, if you wanted a bit more or a bit less water, the soil type could be pushed up or down a notch or two on the scale
@bmbrown911, you are correct. Technically, you could chose whatever soil type you want, and manually adjust the AW to .2", however, Clay Loam looks to have the same .2" default AW.
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What about the cycle and soak feature with this type of soil. Should I do a manual one or just leave it at clay loam and let it do it automatically?
I’m not 100% sure, but I think the cycle soak is calculated by the actual AW figure, not just the reflected type. If you feel you need/want it, you can force it by changing the slope of the zone as well. Slope affects nothing else other than cycle soak.
Soak is just going to Water for half the time, do the other zones (or wait a few minutes), then water again. Helping prevent runoff. If your lawn is nearly level it won’t matter either way. I’m not sure there is any reason NOT to soak.
I am not positive, but believe I have heard soak will not do anything unless the slope is high enough. If this is the case, I wish it were not like that. I have loamy sand and water goes mostly through it. I’ve been told by the side people that doing a soak will water The Roots more efficiently.
I think slope plays a huge part and cycle soak can be forced by setting slope to it’s highest setting, but I believe it also takes into account the water capacity of the soil and the precipitation rate.
We have slopes and even with the slope settings it doesn’t cycle and soak long enough for us. Aside from the slopes our soil is very compacted so the water penetration is really slow. As a result we (and this can be another option for some) implement the manual cycle and soak. We put out 2 cycles of 12 minutes of watering and then 9 minutes as a 3rd cycle. I could probably get this down to 2 cycles but I rather do it this way so that I know the water is getting deep. Additionally with this method we do not see a lot of water pooling like we did before, which eventually turned into runoff and wasted the water.
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