How much water, you ask ?
A slightly modified 2+ year old post of mine...
To water 1000 square foot of your garden with 1 inch
of water it takes 623 gallons (1 gallon = 231 cubic
inches)
This is 89 gallons per day, or 178 gallons every other
day. For 1 1/2 inches of water per week it takes
934.5 gallons per week. 133.5 gallons per day, or 167
gallons every other day.
If you don't know how much water comes out of your
hose, here is one thing you can do -(if you don't
want to by a flow meter) Get a five gallon bucket -
turn on you hose the same as when you water your plant
using the same nozzle, sprayer, just straight out of
the hose or whatever. Time how long it takes you to
fill the 5 gallon bucket.
For the example above, (133.5 gallons per day), say it
took 35 seconds to fill the bucket. Convert the 35
seconds to minutes, which is 0.583. Take 133.5
divided by 5 gives 26.7 (# of 5 gal. buckets needed
per day to get 1 inch of water per week) Then take
26.7 x 0.583 = 15.5 minutes. Thus with your flow
rate, you should water your 1000 sq. ft. garden for
about 15 min. 30 sec. everyday to get 1 inch of water
on it.
If you have sprinklers you can put some rain gages in
the patch. Run them for a set time, say 30 min. and
measure how much water you have in the gages. Try to
be as accurate as you can. You might want to take an
average of several different gages. (the more the
better- a empty tuna type can makes a good watering
gage)
Say you measured an average of 3/8 inch (0.375 in.) of
water in you gages in the 30 minutes. Divide 30 by
0.375 which gives 80 minutes. (The amount of time
required to get 1 inch of water on you patch) Multiply
by 1.5 if you want 1 1/2 inches of water on garden per
week, or 120 minutes. Divide by 7 to get a daily
watering time = 11.4 minutes for 1 inch of water or
17.1 minutes for 1 1/2 inches of water in your garden
per week. Double these numbers if you water every
other day instead of everyday.
Gordon Tanner
Maple Valley, WA
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