I live in central South Carolina and have Centipede grass, which requires more water than normal in summer, and has shallow (6") roots, but which turns brown and goes dormant in the winter. It’s starting to turn now (we had a 31 degree night time temperature last night).
It is normally accepted by homeowners here (not landscapers or horticulturalists, but homeowners) that no irrigation is necessary in the winter. Grass is supposed to be tan/brown anyhow, right? Plus, SC usually gets a good amount of precipitation in the winter. But I’m reading some sources that indicate that during dry periods, even in winter, it is best to irrigate some. Well, the last rain we had was 5 days ago, there’s no rain forecast for 6 days, and not much then.
So, should I water? I use Flex Daily and like it, but can’t imagine putting down almost a half inch of water at once like I do in the summer. I was considering reducing my root depth to result in less water, maybe to half or even a fourth of it’s normal value. But with the ET running about .05 to .06, a fourth would water every other day, and that really seems like too much/often. People are going to think I’m crazy. I’ve also considered halving my Crop Coefficient so as only to require half the water. I don’t know. Right now I’m watering everything with 0.1" water manually because my graph says it’s down to 17%.
For those living in similar climates with grass that goes dormant, do you water during winter? What are your thoughts? IF I’m going to water at all, I like the idea of letting Rachio handle it; just not sure what to change for this non-standard applications.
We have similar problems in the summer with California Native plants and those from other mediterranean climates. They like water in the winter and a little in the summer. I would like the ability to set a once monthly setting so I could give it a deep or light soak once a month in the summer and also if it doesn’t rain in So. Cal. in the winter.
I have found that if you start adjusting all of the settings you loose the value of the controller which is to irrigate based on the plant and weather conditions. When you do that, you really don’t know which setting needs to be adjusted next. It turns into, as another in the community said, “A Hot Mess.” One of my designer friends will not recommend the Rachio for that reason.
I WISH- They could just add a Non-Traditional schedule setting to the Advanced Menu and add a Monthly setting to the frequency.
Now, you & I have to remember to do a manual irrigation. I’m old and so is my memory.
While there are a lot of settings, just two can be adjusted to change what Rachio does any way you want: Root Depth will change how much water is applied at one time (so if I put in 3" it will water half as much as my standard 6"), and Crop Coefficient, which changes how much water over time is applied. Here, my lawn requires 0.85, so halving it would apply half the normally “needed” water. Those two settings would be easy enough to change, and then to change back. I just don’t know how much I should really change it. Or IF I should even try.
FYI, I decided to change my settings as follows, and for now, continue through the winter using Flex Daily:
Lawn root depth was changed from 6" to 2.5", resulting in 40% of the amount of water being applied during one day.
Crop Coefficient was changed from 85% to 50%, resulting in 59% of the water being applied per week than it normally would apply.
Similar changes to the drip zone.
Since this obviously takes a lot less time, I’ve moved my start time from 5AM to 8AM.
All these are based on a SWAG (Scientific WAG). For now, I just like the idea of applying SOME water during the winter, as we’ve had 80 degree Christmas days here, but realize that dormant grass requires much less water over time and at once. Most sources agree that in South Carolina, some irrigation should be applied during spells of warmer and dryer temperature, and this should provide for that automatically. This will also insure that shrubs and trees have some water during a time when I normally wouldn’t have watered them. Of course, if it’s too cold, the system will skip watering with the Freeze Skip. I’ll have to see how much this will cost me, but don’t think it will be too much. At this point, no watering is scheduled until December 9.
To document these changes, as well as to remind me to turn them back to more reasonable values, I’ve set up a Calendar task/message outlining the changes made as well as stating to turn them back, for March 15 of next year (about when we should start watering normally again).
This is an old thread, but I had the same questions since this is my first winter with the Rachio. I am in North Texas with Bermuda and St. Augustine grass (like all my neighbors). I guess my question is really for anyone from Rachio that might be monitoring this forum:
Does the Rachio logic take into account seasonal change when using the Flex Daily schedule?
While warm season grasses might still require some water during the winter season, they obviously require much less. The adjustments made by the OP here make sense, but shouldn’t that be taken into account already by the Rachio firmware based on the type of grass, and region of the country? I would find it surprising that the Flex Daily schedule is region/time of year dumb. I had a fixed schedule set up (not in use) and I still get notices that a season shift (or something like that) has been applied to the schedule. I would think this would also apply to the internal logic of Flex Daily, even though I don’t get a notice.
My system ran a few zones last month over a couple of days. Grass has been brown here for a while, but we did have some warm weather for a couple of weeks. But the zones ran like it was the middle of the summer as far as run time. Seemed like overkill to me for this time of year.
Prior to having the Rachio I subscribed to Texas A&M’s “Water My Yard” program which uses similar (albeit not as regionally granular as Rachio) evapotranspiration algorithms to recommend watering times based on the weather, and assuming warm weather grasses. I still get their recommendations and they recommend turning off the system completely during the winter. A&M is pretty much the horticulture center of the universe in this part of the country so I was surprised they did not even give a caveat that grasses still need water in the winter.
So maybe I should just “Pause” the system for the winter, if that’s the purpose of that function…
It will adjust it back based on the cooler temps, but Bermuda (can’t 100% confirm St. Augustine) needs no supplemental watering when it is dormant. Rachio does not take this fact into account, so it will still typically water a couple times a week when not necessary. In Arizona, on years when I opt to not overseed my lawn, I suspend the Flex Daily schedule for my lawns, and will set one fixed schedule to run once a week for a few minutes, more for the soil, not the grass. If I don’t give the soil SOMETHING, it will develop some large cracks and fishers in the top layer of soil that make it hard to correct come Spring.
I have Centipede grass, and live in South Carolina. Most people here don’t water their grass in the winter because it’s dormant. But the agricultural extension says you /should/ water it during long dry and warmer periods. That was what I was trying to do.
Problem is that Rachio’s Flex Daily always waters the same amount. So if you need very little water, which we do at this time, it will water the heck out of the grass, then not water for a week or two. I personally don’t like this.
I’d suggested to them some time ago we have a Flex Daily version, which I called Cruise Control, which still uses all the factors and graphs of Flex Daily, but you tell it how often to water, and it varies the amount of water applied. So watering in the winter, once a week, would apply just a little water, which I think is great. Instead of drowning it, then waiting weeks. This would work as well in summer, better IMHO.
I think that Flex Daily’s formulas, with the inputs of soil type, root depth, allowed depletion, crop coefficient, etc. takes into account the properties of the grass during the growing season, and the water evaporation/use due to weather, but not the fact that the grass might be dormant, and not really require that much.
I agree with you that the best fix is to take into account the type of turf/plant and its water requirements during dormant times. I think Rachio might also, but their answer is likely that keeping up with all the different turf types and regions to make the adjustment is too much for the program at this time.
Your suggestion of a “dormant” mode override per zone might be good. If I only had to switch this one switch each year I would be happy. I haven’t even considered my shrubs in all this… hmmm.
