Guy Serbin's advice is right on target. If you need to come up with a
quick estimate of total water usage for planning or reporting purposes,
try this:
Calculate the amount of water needed to cover an area the size of the
garden to the depth of 1.5 inches once a week for 26 weeks. A gallon
contains 231 cubic inches of water. Therefore, one inch of rainfall or
irrigation for each square foot of garden would equal 0.62 gallon, and
1.5 inches would make it a bit less than a whole gallon. So let's say
that a well-mulched garden of 1,000 square feet would require, at most,
some 900 gallons of water per week from some combination of rainfall and
supplemental irrigation. (If these figures leave you scratching your
head, I'll be happy to talk further off-list.)
Assuming that an inch or more of rain will fall on the garden each week
during April and May, as is usual for your area, then you will probably
need to do little additional watering in the spring beyond what's
required to get seedlings and new transplants established. Just follow
Guy's recommendations for calculating your supplemental water needs for
the rest of the season (primarily mid-June to mid-September).
Summing up: estimate your total water consumption for 26 weeks, subtract
the rainfall, and you'll have a rough idea of what you'll need to supply
via irrigation over the course of the season. Of course, deep,
infrequent watering (preferably early in the day) and thick mulches of
chopped fall leaves, dried grass clippings and/or straw are essential
ingredients in the whole process.
Guy Serbin wrote:
Abby,
That would vary based upon climate, crop, gardener experience,
irrigation technology, maintenance, etc. As such, I wouldn't use
irrigation data from anywhere outside of your area unless it had a
comparable climate. A first start would be to put in place water
meters on any irrigation systems and then keep a log of irrigation
usage at regular intervals. As for precipitation, you'd need to use
weather station data or NEXRAD precipitation data to estimate that
unless the farms have on-site stations. Some of the larger community
farms in the Baltimore area may have some data on that, e.g., the
Kayam Farm at the Pearlstone Center in Reisterstown, MD, but I don't
know if the smaller ones, e.g., the Whitelock Community Farm in
Reservoir Hill, does.
Sincerely,
Guy Serbin
On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Cocke, Abby
<[email protected]> wrote:
I was wondering if anyone had any figures on how much water their garden
uses... per quarter, per year, anything like that?
Thanks!
Abby Cocke
Environmental Planner, Office of Sustainability
Baltimore City Department of Planning
417 East Fayette Street, 8th Floor
Baltimore, Maryland 21202
410-396-1670 Phone
410-244-7358 Fax
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
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