Water Requirments

[slugmar]

Im doing a little bigger garden then I normaly do and want to set it up better. So was wondering if anyone of you might know of a website that deals with gph (gallons per hour) for veggies plants ?

I really want to set this big garden up to be more effecient where Im not drowing one item and giving one item to much water.

 

[whatnow?]

If you are being that specific, should I presume that you are looking at an irrigation system?

http://www.dripdepot.com/calculating_dripper_requirements.html

I use drip irrigation and put an emitter at the base of each plant in a mound and use drip tape for plants in rows. The emitters come in different flow rates. The only place to get them in southeastern PA, besides the internet, is wally world.

I think I use emitters that are 1 gph for my mature cucumbers and tomatos. Each emitter can have a valve to regulate the flow, but when the pressure is too low, the emitters just stop (and the valves are unreliable.) I keep an assortment and just change them out if the rate is too low or too high. The trick is to get the proportions correct for the different varieties of plants. In especially hot spells, I just hit the manual button on the timer and give a little extra or double up the watering program.

 

[slugmar]

yes I'm using a drip irrigation system also but I bought flag emitters which when they get plugged can be taken apart and cleaned according to the sales man lol... they are all 2gph. In the garden behind my house I have 14 rows x 100 ft. On the along the fence line ill most likely have 33 mounds of watermelons and then behind my parents is another patch of garden but I have yet to mound it up or row it up since we just got some rain and I have been working.

The plan behind my house is I'm going to run a feeder house down the front of the garden which is 75 foot then run 100 ft of half inch pipe down each row then bring of 1/4 house and a emitter to each plant and on my corn rows I plan to run soaker hose down those two.

does that sound like a pretty good plan, this is my first drip irrigation system it sounds decent in my head but I really don't have any one to bounce the idea off of and my wife is getting tired of me walking around the house talking about that and pricing out items for the market. I think she might think I'm going crazy.

 

[whatnow?]

They sound like the itty bitty valves I have. Being able to take them apart is the achilles heal... my water pressure is kind of high (55-65 psi), so they tend to blow out the flag and squirt in the air when I get a little water hammer. I guess that makes them self cleaning. I've been switching them out to the round, pressure correcting, fixed rate emitters, but I didn't put a filter near the source, so I've been getting clogging everywhere.

Your garden is orders of magnitude bigger than mine. I have a single trunk line with 12-15 foot 1/4 extensions. If you are running 1/2" down each row, you may be able to get away with not using any 1/4 hose if the 1/2" is close enough. It will probably want to fall to the bottom of a row, though.

Are you using anything for timing that monster system?

 

[slugmar]

yeah my watch lol trying to get away with it cheaper this year and ill add more to it every year.

 

[whatnow?]

yeah my watch lol trying to get away with it cheaper this year and ill add more to it every year.

I have no attention span for that method. I might wake up a 2:00 in the morning thinking... was I supposed to turn something off....