I have a raised bed with drip lines set to a fixed schedule, every day interval, start time of 6 am, total watering duration of 30 mins and a soak and cycle of 10 mins cycle, 5 hours soak.
What I hoped that would achieve is 10 mins of watering every 5 hours, 3 times per day (6 am, 11 am, 4 pm).
What is happening is 30 mins of watering at 6 am and nothing the remainder of the day.
What did I do wrong?
@ml777 - I could be mistaken, but I don’t think that drip lines use the soak and cycle feature. Change the sprinkler type to something else and see if that works.
@dlane is right. Cycle soak won’t work on zones with drip emitters set as there is almost no way they could produce enough water to require that (in the traditional sense of avoiding runoff).
Personally, I’d create multiple fixed schedules to achieve what you are trying to do. Similar to when I overseed, your raised beds really shouldn’t need 3 waterings a day once they are established, so having individual fixed schedules allows you to suspend 1 or 2 waterings when things establish.
If you are insistent on doing it as cycle soak, you can try to trick the system. Change nozzle to a high flow spray head and change the slope to the max. This might be enough to force a cycle soak that you are after.
Interesting. We live in the desert and temps can easily reach past 100 for days on end in the summer; thus the need for periodic watering throughout the day. I would LOVE to simply set fixed schedules but we’re only allowed 16 schedules and I have roughly 12 zones. 3 schedules per day for 12 zones is 36 schedules which Rachio sadly doesn’t allow.
I’m also in the desert, Phoenix metro area. I don’t have anything that runs multiple times a day, and rarely does anything even run every day…
What type of plants/crops are in these raised beds? Raised beds do have a tendency to dry out faster because the heat hitting all sides of the soil, but unless you have new seeds germinating, I can’t see there really being much that would need multiple times a day. I come from old school where we watered with flood irrigation and were on a 2 week cycle. Our garden/crops only saw water on that frequency once they were out of germination phase, which did require some hand watering.
I’ve never thought of NOT watering several times a day in 100+ weather. Thanks for the info, I’ll give it some thought.
I will say that if that has been your way of watering, that promotes a very shallow root structure, as the roots stay close to the surface since that is where the water is. Longer infrequent water forces the roots to go deeper, which promotes a more drought tolerant plant. It might take a bit of time to “train” the plants to seek a deeper root structure, so you will want to slowly make those adjustments. Maybe leave it once a day for 30 minutes if that amount of water has done well. After a few weeks, maybe back off to 3-4 times a week for 45-50 minutes, and keep progressing. Currently my shrub zone (not in raised beds) run about every 3-5 days in the heat of summer, but run for 3h25m (1gph emitter per plant). Raised beds may not be able to tolerate 5 days in the dead of summer due to the soil drying out, but just watch the crops.
Again though, what kind of plants are in the raised beds?
Veggies (tomatoes, herbs, squash, cucumber, cantaloupe, onions, carrots). In other raised beds, annual and perennial flowers.
You might want to try the new “grow-in” schedule type, which allows automatically repeated watering cycles each day (for new growth, overseeding, etc.). It might fit what you’re looking for, although it’s got some limitations:
I’ve noted that it only will work for predefined intervals (1, 2, 4, and 6 hours), so not a perfect fit for your 5 hour interval plan. Personally, I need 3 hour intervals for my particular use case.
Doesn’t seem to interact with the majority of skips (freeze, wind, rain), although it does interact with the new Weather Adjust rules,.