Fixed New Winter Seed Schedule

Hi All,
I live in Gilbert, AZ. I have a Rachio 2. I set up my zones for the grass areas to what the landscaper wants for seed germination (start @ 6:00am, run hourly for 2 minutes/zone, end at 6:00pm). When I look at the calendar times, it starts at 12:00am! I’ve tried adjusting the the time from start at specific time to end before to specific time to start after sunset to end before sunrise. None of the Times give me the desired effect described above. Cycle and Soak is set to Smart Cycle. Interval is set to every hour. Type is set to Fixed Schedule. Help Please!

I’m also in Gilbert!

While a bit more involved to set up, I highly recommend setting up individual fixed schedules for each run time. I personally think hourly is a bit much, but if that is what you landscaper wants, so be it.

The good thing about setting up individual fixed schedules is that as the weeks pass, you can delete the schedules (or simply disable for next season) as the seed starts to germinate and grow. After 3-4 weeks, you can delete/disable all fixed schedules and return to your normal watering schedule.

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Thank you so much!!! It’s been a real pain in my schedule to run each zone for 2 minutes each hour.

I usually run mine every 2-3 hours during daylight hours and I’ve never had an issue with growing grass. That usually means 5-6 fixed schedules, and after the first two weeks, I remove about half of them, and then 1 more each week after. After the first mowing, I flip mine over to my Flex Daily, and all is well!

Mine is running 8 times a day @ 2 minutes each. I’ll be there today so can check the soil. Thank you for the tips! Just bought this house, and haven’t had an AZ yard for 7 years. I’m super dependent on yard guy right now. I totally appreciate your information. I’ll probably do a hybrid of what you and he say. :hugs:

For me, rule of thumb is to run your sprinklers the same amount of time your normal schedule is, just spread out throughout the day. In my case, my zones with Hunter MP Rotators run for 55 minutes each, normally, so I set mine to run 10 minutes 5-6 times throughout the day, and it has always worked for me.

2minutes per zone sounds questionable to me. My full circle heads take about that long to make a rotation. The other issue is you probably are barely wetting the straw, and may not be getting the soil wet at all, so just evaporating most of that water. It’ll keep the seeds cool, and help retain the moisture that is there, but you probably aren’t adding moisture.

Run half a many times, twice as long.

Thank you so much! I appreciate the input.