Hi, I have an area of established Kurapia (relatively new, low-water use ground cover) on a dedicated sprinkler zone and am wondering which “zone type” would be most appropriate. It’d be great to have a non-grass ground cover option available on the app. But a recommendation on the best current option would be helpful. Thank you!
Jeff
Do you have a local site, perhaps the manufacturer of the plant? From my quick search, perhaps you are in Southern California? I live in a high alpine environment, and love Colorado State University’s pages for understanding my local environment.
There is a LOT of stuff here, perhaps you can find something useful here?
I like to treat Kurapia just like other drought tolerant ground covers, such as African Daisies or even Gazania Riggens. Since it is a deep rooting ground cover you can essentialy label it in one of 2 ways.
I have grown it by labeling it as “warm season grass” while irrigating with Toro Precsion nozzles and telling the Rachio that I am using standard MPR nozzles.
The second way is to label it as “cold season grass” and just using Hunter MP Rotator nozzles. Either of these 2 combinations manage to get the right saturation without over irrigating.
You may want to run this cycle for 2 weeks at twice a week before changing it to a flex cycle.
In the event that you do not care to play with tricking the controller, you can just run it as warm season grass on standard MP nozzles and use the assistance of a moisture meter to see how deep you saturation actually is and then manipulate it in the “Duration” setting on it’s zone program.
As with all irrigation, I’m sure you already know, deep and infrequent irrigation is recommended.
My climate is Dallas. I run full automatic (flex daily) - I don’t manually adjust anything all year long.
One of my zones is exclusively buffalo grass. If it were not for fire concern, I’d never water it. It’s a grass that thrives on neglect (watering).
To keep it from going brown in the middle of the summer, I’ve learned it needs to be watered once every 3 - 4 weeks.
There’s no grass related zone type that allows for this infrequent of watering, that I’m aware of. You have to use ‘trees’ as the zone type.
My other settings are Rotor head Spray Head, Clay Loam Soil Type, Mostly shade Exposure, Flat Slope, 0.2 Available Water (default), 25 In. Root Depth (default), 90% Allowed Depletion, 70% Efficiency (default), 75% Crop Coefficient (default), and 1 in. Nozzles Inches Per Hour (default).
If there’s no rain, these settings will put down a good amount of water about every 28 days. It takes a good part of the day for this zone because of soaking time delays.
If anyone knows how to water about every 28 days with a grass Zone Type, I’d value the learning.
If not, then I’d suggest Rachio enhancement to include zone types more specific than ‘warm’ or ‘cool’ grass. Like ‘Buffalo grass’ (little water needed) and ‘St. Augustine’ (lots of water needed) and ‘Zoysia’ (not a lot of water needed).
Kind regards,
Bill