My grass is dying in the front and back yards (zones 2, 3, 5, & 6) These zones get 12 hours of HOT Texas sun with no shade. They are so dry even with the water they have been getting that you can’t stick a screwdriver in the soil. The weather station is up and running. The Zones 5 and 6 are so dry and yet the app shows soil moisture of 25% which seems unbelievable since we can’t stick a metal stake in the yard (screwdriver or moisture meter). Zone 7 shows 0% soil moisture but is moist enough that I can stick a 'moisture meter" in the ground. Can you explain why that is?
I am running a Flex Daily and the grass looks bad. I changed the ‘advanced’ settings in the zone back to default per Rachio Support and the grass is not good. I have been running the Rachio outside of the schedule and supplementing with an old fashioned garden hose and sprinkler. We need help with ‘dialing’ in the correct settings. I have changed the soil from Clay to a Loamy Sand as the 'typical profile ’ for our area per the Soil websites sent to me by Rachio Support. The soil description for our area says:
0-10 inches Loamy fine Sand
10-27 inches loamy fine Sand
27-67 inches sandy clay loam
Based on this, what soil type do I need to select for my Rachio 2?
The “Advanced Settings” for each zone are set to ‘default’ per Rachio Support
I don’t know much about that plant but for now can you disable Flex and switch to a fixed schedule that you may have been running before getting the Rachio? Save your lawn first then let’s figure out how to get flex daily working for you. You’ll still have opportunities for intelligent watering with Fixed.
With Flex, you probably need higher crop evapotranspiration, shallower root depth, and measured precipitation rate. But first let’s go to a baseline that you know should work then try one zone at a time on Flex.
Thanks and not to worry, I will not let my Zoysia grass die. I just would like to be able to use this Rachio 2 the way it is designed and get the settings dialed in so I can take advantage of the way the system is designed to work…efficiently.
Okay, so for Flex Daily – try these suggestions on one or two zones first before rolling out to everything:
First, keep it on Loamy Sand since that seems to be verified and your plant roots will likely never reach that clay – 27" is really deep!
Next, Zoysia is apparently a “Warm season” grass so make sure that is selected as crop type. Its crop coefficient would be around 60-70%. Apparently Zoysia roots can get pretty deep, so probably keep it on the default warm season grass root depth of ~9" (may want to reduce the root depth a couple of inches, maybe to 6", if the grass is not well established or got watered in a shallow manner; you can always dig a small hole and measure root depth at a representative but hidden spot). Reducing the root depth would help increase watering frequency. See Advanced Zone settings for all these settings you can tweak.
And then the most important thing is to use the catch-cup test to measure your sprinkler precipitation rate or nozzle in/hr at each zone. This could actually be the largest way to impact the schedule – it may be that the defaults have too high of a precipitation rate for your sprinklers, thus watering for less time than actually needed.
