What an elegant instrument, Jama! I'm sorry that I couldn't express my
appreciation sooner.
Now, wouldn't it be great if some gardeners who have metered usage data
from previous years would decide to test the model's ability to handle
site-specific, regional and seasonal variations (hint, hint)? This model
shows real promise as a budget tool for garden planners and grant writers.
Jama Crawford wrote:
I thought these two fellows provided great answers, and to support
their time and effort, I created an Excel spreadsheet to do the math
for you by inserting your local conditions. I am going to try to
attach it to this email (not sure if the list serv will strip
attachments). If you don't get an attachment, please contact me off
the list serv and I will send it to you privately.
I entered our own garden's local values in the yellow boxes as an
example. You should replace those values with your own.
Extreme heat and drying winds would naturally affect the results.
Jama Crawford
Shared Harvest Community Garden
Durango CO
----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Menn" <[email protected]>
To: "Cocke, Abby" <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 10:42 AM
Subject: Re: [Community_garden] water usage
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]>
Please consider the environment prior to printing.
www.baltimoresustainability.org
<http://www.baltimoresustainability.org>
www.facebook.com/baltimoresustainability
<http://www.facebook.com/baltimoresustainability>
Sign up for the Baltimore Sustainability newsletter!
<http://baltimoresustainability.us2.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=648ddea
ff0cd176b731896e4a&id=8a08a6c000>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
<http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20110726/c9f1e18e/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 9615 bytes
Desc: image001.png
URL:
<http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20110726/c9f1e18e/attachment.png>
_______________________________________________
The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one
of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the
ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to
http://www.communitygarden.org
To post an e-mail to the list:
[email protected]
To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription:
http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
_______________________________________________
The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one
of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the
ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to
http://www.communitygarden.org
To post an e-mail to the list:
[email protected]
To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription:
http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
<http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20110726/fe85b70c/attachment.html>
_______________________________________________
The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of
ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA
and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org
To post an e-mail to the list:
[email protected]
To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription:
http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus
signature database 6326 (20110726) __________
The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.
http://www.eset.com
_______________________________________________
The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's
services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out
how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org
To post an e-mail to the list: [email protected]
To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription:
http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
