Home lawn irrigation question

After taking the master gardener class, they stated the biggest waste of money is watering your lawns. Literally just throwing money away. Take it for what it’s worth but we saw a few yards without any irrigation and they were practically weedless, green, no yellowing what’s so ever. This was St Aug.

Don't water every day. That is the biggest issue. Really the best is only water when you need to and no more.

Look up the needs for your grass type.

Find out how long it takes each zone to put down about a half inch of water. That will likely be a good starting point for each zone.

My city water is garbage, but rain certainly makes everything go wild. My mom's water is much better, and when my step-dad turns off the sprinklers, and forgets to turn them on, all of the plants die in the summer

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This is good plan
I do three times and a little less on shrubs but at least 20 on lawn
In this heat in Texas I sometimes run a full cycle through the night before a regular water day to allow plants to absorbed moisture overnight and then another soakin the morning
Look at the yard after a station and adjust as required so you are not watering after you have started water run off to a drain etc

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It is recommended to reduce the time the water sits on grass to prevent fungus. Watering between 3-6AM is usually a good time to get good absorption without having water sit on the plants for 8+ hours.

The general guideline you’ll find recommended by all land grant universities in the South for lawns, landscape beds, etc. is a minimum 1 inch of water per week, spring through fall. So you’ll need to experiment with your own system to see what settings achieve that for you, perhaps starting with some of the settings recommended by others as an initial starting point.

Get some empty tuna fish cans (about 1 inch deep) place them in strategic areas of your irrigation coverage area. See how long it takes them to fill to one inch when operating your irrigation system. . Best to water infrequently and deeply than a frequently and shallow. Depending on your soil you may not be able to provide 1 inch + in a single watering. For example water may run off heavy clay soils before it sufficiently soaks in, so you might want to try to target a 1/2 inch of water twice a week or even two separate watering in the same day if you have heavy clay soils.

As already recommended by others ideally water early morning to minimize water loss to evaporation and to minimize lawn disease issues, particularly for St Augustine. Also if you have large mature trees in your yard you might need to provide more water than the 1 inch as the tree roots compete with the lawn grass for water.

Lastly, do you have the ability to integrate a rain gauge monitor in your irrigation system so that your irrigation system doesn’t operate during periods where you are getting sufficient rainfall? If so, consider installing one. In the interim, use a cheap rain gauge to monitor rainfall, and operate your irrigation system when you get less than 1 inch of rain per week, and don’t operate it when you do. Too frequent watering can be as problematic as under watering, so don’t get to giddy and overuse your new lawn irrigation system.

Get a Rachio 3 controller. It does all of this for you and skips days if there will be rain.

Money well invested