Watering amounts & times
 

I need some advice on watering my lawn of St Augustine grass.
Im setting my zone timer starting at 3am and set to 3 times per week. Is this enough
Is 15 minutes each zone enough water ?

Thanks. Will

If you are in the Villages you have recommended watering days and times.

I have mine set to 20mins for grass and 10mins for plants, twice per week starting at 3AM.

That sounds about right, but grass needs more water than shrubs. I would use 10 minutes per zone for shrubs and 20 minutes for grass. Three days per week is fine, but I think most people only water 2 days per week. A lot depends on how your lawn looks.

You really need to put out cups / cans and measure the amount of water your irrigation system sprays per zone.

St Augustine grass needs 1 to 1.5 inches of water per week as a minimum.

It’s best to spread this amount out over two days watering cycles. In the heat of the summer you might need to add a third day and put down an additional 1/2”.

It’s also a good idea to pause your watering cycles so you don’t oversaturate the soil and have a lot off runoff. So have different start times on the same zone….give it about a half to an hour break. Hopefully I explained that right.

Starting at 3 AM is good. You don’t want water sitting on your grass blades for too long as it promotes fungal growth. Watering during the late morning / day is no good as more of the water will be lost to evaporation than what reaches the roots.

Best not to ask how long others are watering. To many variables……for example, I have low flow irrigation heads on a west facing lawn in sandy soil. I water for 80 minutes twice a week. In the summer, I add another 40 minutes to that. My partially shaded side lawn gets half that amount.

From Deans.

?? You can probably get away with once a week if you keep an eye on the grass. You need to water with enough water to go down into the ground to encourage the roots to go deep. It depends on how much water your system puts out but I do mine about 60 minutes. Recommended is about 90 minutes. My lawn is about 10 years old. First year or two you probably want to water twice a week in the summer and maybe 90 minutes.

I water twice a week.
Zone 1. Planters. 25 minutes.
Zone 2. Front lawn. 35 minutes.
Zone 3. Side yards. 15 minutes.
Zone 4. Rear yard. 20 minutes.

Each zone runs for 10 minutes. Moves to the next zone for 10 minutes and repeats until all watering is complete. Gives the water a chance to soak in between cycles.

There is no all-around perfect answer here to watering your grass and gardens. For now, we have been in a drought, just meaning mostly no rain, and besides that, our super low humidity and dry winds above 10t sucks all the moisture from what you are only providing with the generalized 2 or 3 days a week water that is normal for this time a year normally. Look around at all the yards that are wind-burned and dry today. Look at a weather app and water when the winds are low, and yes, water every day at that time. Divide your recommended watering times for the two or three days by seven and water every day at the right time. There is no set-it-and-forget-it setting for your irrigation timer; it is up to you, as the owner, to pay attention to our weather patterns. What is an extra $25 dollars a month to keep everything hydrated?

I would hesitate to divide by seven and water everyday. Staying with the recommended days and hours helps keep the water pressure up. Dividing by seven could result in too little water to penetrate the soil leading to poor water retention and shallow roots.

Thank you everyone !
 

Thanks for al the great advice..especially about the recommended Village watering schedule..
Thanks. Will

if you are watering in the dark at 3 a.m. how would you know if any of your sprinklers have exploded?......if it is light out, at least either you could tell, or a neighbor could tell you.....its a huge amount of water coming out of an exploded sprinkler head...

You should only need to water 2 days a week. The time depends on the types of nozzles you have on your sprinklers.

MP heads need to be set at 50 minutes. Sprayers should be around 25 minutes. Rotors should be 40-50 minutes per zone. As the heat and humidity increase, you might need to add a third day.

Mike234. that's why you need to do a sprinkler checkup during daylight every so often. Never water during the day. Winds during that time will defeat your purpose of watering.

These websites should help answer your questions:

Irrigation Schedules | TheVillagesWaterWisdom


Urban Landscaping and Irrigation - MREC - UF/IFAS - University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences - UF/IFAS

Why not just get a smart sprinkler controller and forget about it. If you don’t, you will be 1 of the thousands of homes watering your lawns while we are getting a downpour. Then, if you want the deluxe setup, I got my own PWS that my SMART sprinkler controller runs off of. I know exactly how much rain I have received, what the prediction of rail is and how much rain we are supposed to get, then the smarts of the controller will operate off all of those stats and run each zone for the appropriate number of days for a specific amount of time per zone.
With these smart devices, you can turn on restrictions so if it needs watering, you only water on these days, or you have no restrictions on which days to water on and it will run when it needs too. I click on the calendar for the coming month and I can see exactly when it’s going to water, and for how long of time per zone. It updates this calendar everyday because the weather is unpredictable. I’ve used these in my last 3 houses and have converted a dozen friends over to them