#flood irrigation

[pumpkin-patch]

Pumpkin seedlings going for their first swim this morning, wish them luck! 🤞

[rjzimmerman]

Gaming gravity on the farm » Yale Climate Connections

Agriculture uses a lot of water. But what if that water were used for more than growing food? A program in Colorado is helping farmers harness hydropower to lower costs and save time.

Excerpt:

A whooshing sound pierces the air as water starts to flow through the pipe. It’s going to a “center pivot” in the meadow where we’re standing. A center pivot is a way of irrigating that makes those bright green circles you see from airplanes. Water comes up in the middle of a field and motorized wheels move a long arm with sprinklers around in a circle.

But Snyder’s center pivot is different than ones you might see in other parts of the country. It’s a “hydro-mechanical” center pivot for irrigation. It’s called hydro-mechanical because it’s powered by moving water – no diesel or electricity are required to make it work – just gravity. The pressure that builds as the water is piped down the hillside is great enough to spin a turbine, which provides energy for its hydraulic motors.

After the pivot pressurizes, water starts to spray out of nozzles strung along the long arm that stretches over a quarter of a mile out into Snyder’s field, putting the droplets exactly where they need to go.

Snyder says that flood irrigation uses only about 30-40 percent of the water in order to grow the same quality crop as you do with an efficiency project that uses all the water that you put on because it doesn’t run off. He says when he was flood irrigating the water would collect at the bottom of his fields, often leaving the top land burnt and dry.

That moving water would also lead to erosion because, as he explains, when you send water down a ditch – especially if you have steep hillsides as he does on his ranch – it can cause quite a bit of damage. “Eventually you’re going to have to send the water down faster than it should go to get to different areas. And that causes gouges – nothing that can’t be fixed – but for a rancher it’s not a priority because once a wash is there, it’s there.”

By switching to the hydro-mechanical center pivot he’s not only irrigating his fields more efficiently, he’s able to spread it across more land. He was flood irrigating 300 acres, but now he’s spread his reservoir water out over 500 acres and making the most efficient use of the resource.

[pumpkin-patch]

I wonder if this is enough water

[pumpkin-patch]

48 hour results of pumpkin seedlings after first flood irrigation - nearly all the leaves that were submerged have developed small lesions. I’m not sure if this is a pest issue brought on by the water, or something caused by the water itself.

I notice that the individual leaves that were not fully submerged don’t show lesions, nor does the new growth that has continued since, so I feel pretty okay about this being a superficial rather than a systemic problem and am not expecting it to be fatal at this point.

This surprises me because I grew a couple of test zucchinis in this same spot to gauge how the pumpkins would take it, and saw no such problem on their leaves. They were older when the flooding began, so probably the very young seedlings are just more vulnerable.

[trixclibrarian]

storing water in the landscape - slow it spread it soak it

stored water flood irrigation contour farming

how I want to live & spend my time

roller skating rink on a permaculture farm

[techurdu]

Afforestation of Dry Areas with Irrigation

Afforestation of Dry Areas with Irrigation

AFFORESTATION OF DRY AREAS WITH IRRIGATION: GENERAL: IMPORTANCE OF WATER

Common chemical substance: H2O.

 Found in all three states simultaneously: solid, liquid and gaseous.

 Collective mass of water on the planet is called Hydrosphere.

 Covers about 71% of the Earth’s surface.

 Total mass is 1021 kg.

 Total volume: 1.36 billion km3.

 3% is usable.

 Glaciers, polar ice caps, rivers, lakes &…

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