Are you watering enough?
Posted: July 5, 2012
In dry weather like this it is important to irrigate sufficiently if you can. Vegetable crops need an inch to an inch and a half of water per week. So how much is an inch of water? One acre inch of water is 27,154 gallons!
You may be surprised at how long it takes to give your plants an inch of water. For example, if you are using standard drip irrigation tubing with a flow rate of 0.45 gallons per minute per 100 feet it would take just under six hours to apply one inch of water with one line of irrigation per bed (6ft centers). If you have two lines per bed it would take less – about 3 hours.
Penn State’s Elsa Sanchez and Bill Lamont give more details about determining how long to run drip irrigation for vegetables here.
