Hello all, I’m coming to the end of my first summer using the Gen 2 controller. I must say my lawn’s never looked better!
Now that winter’s coming to Colorado, I’m wondering what, if anything, I need to do to harden off my lawn prior to blowing the system out for the winter. Previously I’d cut back on the watering frequency until mid- to late-October, then shut the system down. Will my controller do that automatically?
Hey @DRP6833!
Wahoo! So glad your first season went well 
Here’s more information on winterization basics!
Lo
Just curious, any feedback on things you think went well with flex daily and things that didn’t go so well? How did you get it dialed-in? No worries if you don’t want to answer, just curious 
Have a great winter!
This is a quote that summarizes my approach to winter for cool season grass.
if the type of grass that you have is a cool-season grass, then this period of time, by definition, is a period of strong growth for your lawn. Do not deprive it of irrigation during this critical time. An adequate water supply for grass roots is essential for proper nutrient uptake during growth periods. And if your lawn is not absorbing nutrients sufficiently, it will not achieve optimal health.
More generally speaking, your grass does keep growing in autumn – even if only in places where you are not aware of its growth, because these spots are hidden from human view; that is, it is growing underground. More specifically, there is growth activity taking place in the stolons of your grass. Such underground parts of your grass plants form their “foundation,” if you will. The activity going on at the stolon level is important to the long-term health of your grass, helping it repair a summertime’s worth of damage and getting it ready for the year ahead.
Following up on my previous post, so far flex daily is doing a good job of managing watering as temps cool down.
In Denver in Sep we have had 17 days of much above normal temps so flex was watering every 3 days or so. But during the several cool periods of more normal temps flex was stretching out to watering every 5 or 6 days.
Thanks for the link, Laura. My question was more about what to do leading up to blowing out the lines for the winter though.
Franz, I set it up to use flex daily (three lawn zones) from the start and it’s worked well for me. The defaults worked but seemed to be over-watering just a bit. I found a post here about increasing watering by increasing the crop coefficient, I went the other way and it was better. Some more tweaking will be necessary next year. My drip lines are set up to run a fixed schedule because I wasn’t very successful at getting a flex schedule to work. Most of that is because I only have the one drip line and it’s covering flower beds, shrubs, and a vegetable garden - not a good mix.
Silharder, from what you said it sounds like the controller will handle the transition to fall for me. I guess I was concerned that I hadn’t seen the watering frequency changing, but I hadn’t considered the extremely hot September we had. Thanks for the info. BTW, I’m one of those folks who will drag the hose out in winter to water the lawn if there’s not been a lot of snow.
Awesome thanks for the feedback!