By Nibal Ata on Wednesday, 12 April 2017
Posted in Irrigation
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Hi experts,
Am looking forward to hearing your experience while running the watering schedule..
Hi Nibal,

This is not a simple question to answer. Every landscape or farm is different, with different planting schemes or crops, in different climates, with different irrigation methods.

For example, take where I live in Seattle. Mature shrub beds need irrigating once or twice per month in the summer, and lawns every other day. Brand new plantings and lawns need more frequent watering. And we don't need irrigation at all from October through April.

Anybody's irrigation schedule is informed by plant species, exposure, local climate conditions, (including ET rates and rain fall), and irrigation method. Farms, which are all about production, have other requirements.

The Irrigation Association has lots of material available regarding irrigation design and management. Take a look.

And keep asking questions and digging for answers. Good luck!
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7 years ago
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Thanks a lot Seaweed..
7 years ago
#79
Nibal,

There are classes for this kind of stuff that will help you learn about water management. There is simply not a way to answer your poll question without knowing the specifics of the site and plants used and understanding how they impact the results of your question.

The goal of managing irrigation is to replenish the water in the root zone which is lost or used due to evaporation and plant transpiration to a level necessary to support the health and vigor of the plant material without over applying it (wasting it) causing water to penetrate below the root zone or running off the surface away from the root zone. How often and how much water to apply on any individual location will depend on the soil, the site topography, solar and wind exposure, the type of plant and a plethora of other factors.

With all of this said, it is conceivable, though not probable, that proper and effective water management could result in irrigating every single day or once a week.

As the President of our United States once said "It's complicated".

If this stuff interests you, I'd like to recommend The IA (Irrigation Association) for further learning,
http://www.irrigation.org/Certification/Certification_Programs.aspx

I'm a Certified Landscape Irrigation Auditor. I've taken the classes and passed the test. I know that anyone else with this certification has been trained to a level that they would know that your poll question has no correct answer, no matter the results of the poll.

I wholly believe that you have the interest and maybe the drive to become very good in this business. The thing is, the LandFX community is probably not the best place for the training that you can benefit most from (only relative to irrigation management). I believe that the IA would be much better for you. Take the Certified Irrigation Water Auditor class and you will learn so much. You, like me (and others that you associate on this site with like Jake and Tom for sure) are, or seem, a little nerdy. The technical stuff intrigues us. Keep up the interest. Feed your brain. Get certified. Not for the piece of paper (which I threw away long ago), but for the knowledge that you gain during the process. Keep getting better. Keep learning more.

Seaweed
7 years ago
#78
Thank you both Tom & Seaweed,
i appriciate the information you brought..
But i asked this doll because i totally believe in that watering schedule is related to several factors,,
and get a little bit confused how to set the proper watering program that suits all my plants..
7 years ago
#77
True Tom, unless you're a policy maker for a water purveyor. Then throw all science and community needs (sports and other community events and even family gatherings) to the wind and say odd number address irrigate Monday, Wednesday and Friday and even numbered addresses irrigate Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Oh. And why don't we just add that the maximum amount of time allowed per station shall be limited to 10 minutes, not matter the precipitation rate of the sprinklers and soil type. Just get the water down and let runoff go where it may.

Right?
7 years ago
#73
Ha! Yes. We don't have drought issues here very often, so politics and and so forth aren't so much an issue. But to paraphrase Leslie Knope (Parks and Recreation): All you have are facts and science, and people hate facts and science!
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7 years ago
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