I’ve had a Rachio for a couple of years now and I can’t seem to setting right for keeping my grass healthy.
I have palisades zoysia on loam sand. I think I have everything set correctly and the system wants to water each zone 1 min 30 seconds everyday which I think is crazy. I have to have something set wrong. I’d like to use the controller to its full potential instead of manually.
I think its a combo of two things.
Your root zone depth seems way too low. Default for cool season grass is 6 inches, warm season grass is 9 inches.
Loamy sand could be problematic. If changing your root zone depth doesn’t help, I’d notch up to sandy loam or loam.
Thank you , the root depth is set at that because that’s the average depth of the roots where I’m at in Florida. I’ll try changing my soil type and see if that helps.
You want to water your grass to its optimum root depth - and even in Florida, that’s pretty deep for Zoysia. Water less, but deep and eventually, your grass can reach that deep, drought-proof depth that you’ll rarely need to worry about.
We’re growing Palisades in NE Texas in clay loam with real 6" deep roots. It goes a bit dormant here, but even then, without any artificial irrigation at all this fall and winter, it’s still working deeper. You’ve specified the most porous of the soil types. As @franz suggests, if you’ve got any organic matter under that Zoysia that can hold water, specify a richer soil type.
You want your grass to work - enough stress for it to seek out water deep in your soil profile. Luckily, you can hardly stress Zoysia enough - it’s a survivor.
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Thank you basically it’s sand underneath the sod. I live very close to the beach is why I picked that setting. I’ll change it and also put a deeper root depth and see how that works.
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