Hi All,
I’m looking for some feedback on an idea I had - or even better ways to handle the issue/concern.
The issue: I’ve got relatively new grass (in a yard that used to be mostly weeds) and it’s dying in the heat of NC.
Some background:
- My yard was an absolute mess (my own fault) and I got a Rachio and a local company to help with the weeds (mostly because they outnumbered the grass)
- Tall Fescue and NC here so lots of clay, lots of heat, and seeding / aerating in the fall.
- loving the flex daily schedule and want to use it to solve the problem I’m having.
Like stated earlier, I’ve been dealing with heat / dying grass at the moment. I’ve added a fixed schedule to “perk it back up” but am trying to think through what happened to my grass that was seeded last fall - besides the fact that it died / is dying - and how to avoid it after it gets more seed this fall.
I think what I should do is set up the zones in my flex daily schedule to support a 2" root depth this fall after seeding (in addition to a set of “new seed” schedules that water 3x / day for a week, then 2x / day for a week, then 1x / day for a week). This should support the new grass when it’s just going.
I’m then thinking I’ll have winter shutdown, spring startup, and waiting maybe 2-3 weeks after that to bump the root depth to 4" and then again 2-3 weeks to go to 6".
I believe my problem is that I set the zones to 6" depth and the heat got to the grass before the roots got to that depth. I’ve already done all the AWC settings. In one zone I’ve recently set the root depth to 4" and did some manual runs and it is showing slow signs of improvement. So I’m thinking I’ve got the right idea…
…but this is where I want your feedback? Does the plan sound good? Should I tweak the time periods between changing root depths? Is there a better way to do this? (I’d like to avoid taking core samples which I know is probably the “best” way to know the root depth)
thanks y’all!