Hi all,
I recently moved into a new home( in Buckeye Az). The previous owner used “traditional” watering methods. Twice a day for 20min every other day.
I attempted to run a daily flex schedule, but my plants were starting to show signs of stress.
Twice a day! Wow!
Your root structure is probably sitting about 2" below the surface with that kind of watering! I’m exaggerating here, but it is true. Frequent short watering like that will cause the roots to stay shallow, and switching to long, infrequent watering can stress the plants. I had to ease into mine over the course of about 6-8 months, and being here in Arizona, you do need to pay attention to your plants as you do it as to not stress them out too much.
First thing I’d recommend is making sure you have all your zone settings correct. Nozzle inches per hour, soil type (affects AWC), and selecting a good local PWS are probably the most important settings to dial in. From there, what I did was used root depth to adjust the frequency of watering. I started by setting the root depth for the plant type way shallower than what it “should” be, and each month I would lower it down, which increased the time between watering.
If you want to post screen shots of your zones, we can help you dial them in.
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