My garden is mostly drought tolerant plants that do not(should not) require a lot of water. These are mostly blue fescue grass, feather reed fountain grass, rocket barberry, nine bark, juniper and day lilies. I’m just setting up for first time and it seems to want to water a LOT more than I have been. I do think I’ve set up the soil type correctly, silt loam, as loam with AWC = .1. thanks for any help
More frequency, or more duration that what you are used to? Your silty soil is going to drain off pretty quick, so frequency might be pretty high. If you absolutely feel the need to adjust to what you are used to, you can plan with crop coefficent field a bit.
I will say that we get this a lot on the forum because quite honestly, most people don’t water “correctly”. And by correctly, I mean in a way to promote deeper more robust root systems that have better drought tolerance, and overall “healthier”, which is how Rachio waters…Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t keep things alive by watering every, multiple times a day for 5 minutes each time, but it isn’t ideal.
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thanks for quick reply. I was watering for 12 minutes x 3 days/wk and Rachio wants to water 18 minutes 4 days/wk. My blue fescue was turning brown and dying and I was told had root rot from too much water.
But, yes, this way of watering is new to me and maybe I should just let Rachio do what it wants and see what happens. The reason I bought the Rachio is because I don’t know how much to water anything.
What schedule type are you running?
I’m on Flex Daily.
I’ve only been watering on Rachio for a week or so. There are four zones covering front yard and they all went off the first day; then only one zone the next; then three zones; today no watering and tomorrow scheduled for one zone.
I was afraid it was going to water way too much, but now that I see it is varying amount of water each day, maybe Rachio knows best.
Earl
You can post screenshots of your zone settings, and the community can take a look…