Better settings for trouble spot

post by Andrsha2 on May 7, 2020

First post here, sorry about the length/breadth…

I have a vegetable garden problem. My soil and exposure are such that, no matter how much I water early on in the day, the top couple of inches gets completely dried out by mid afternoon. As you can imagine, this is havoc on seedlings and new plantings. I have plenty of water retention below about 6”, but my plants don’t seem to ever significantly reach there.

Is my problem in my settings, my soil, both?

I have full sun exposure (SW) in raised beds on a steep slope, soaker hose and fixed sprays, mostly mild winds (3-10mph) like clockwork at about 1pm daily.

My settings are:

• fixed schedule, watering every day, 5 am, 6 minutes,
• garden
• loam
• lots of sun
• flat
• 100 sq ft
• 0.17in./in.
• root depth 12”
• allowed depletion 50%
• efficiency 80%
• crop coefficient 85%
• nozzle in./hour 3.12

I have rain skip/wind skip/smart cycle/saturation skip/seasonal shift on

post by Kubisuro on May 7, 2020

Simply, I’d add another fixed schedule in the afternoon to top off the garden. Probably in the 3-6 minute range. Try the low end first. Fortunately Rachio makes adding another schedule for any zone super easy.

post by Kubisuro on May 7, 2020

You might want to turn off saturation skip though. I see nothing wrong with your settings but they don’t materially affect fixed schedules besides saturation skip. Advanced zone settings are largely used by Flex but I don’t personally recommend Flex for water hungry gardens.