WINNEMUCCA - I'd just poured Beth her first cup of coffee when the oven timer rang. "What's the timer for?" she asked.
"Peas." I said. "And onions. Now I have to toss some on the cauliflower and broccoli."
"Sounds interesting. Give me the recipe."
"Whatever recipe you want, I'll give it to you after I change the water." I love Beth dearly, but sometimes I wonder about the waywardness of her logic.
I'm trying to do a better job of conserving water in my garden. My well is pretty deep, and it is already the single biggest user of electricity on my solar-powered property. Since I can't seem to stop enlarging my garden every year, I have to either conserve or buy more solar panels.
If I used city water, I'd have the incentive of high water bills pushing conservation. For those of us out in Sagebrush Suburbia, the electricity which powers the well may seem cheap - until the well gives out and needs to be drilled again. It behooves all of us in the desert to conserve water.
A few relevant factors: my garden is large and I am forgetful. I am also inept with any technology which requires the ability to read small print, so I haven't installed timers on my irrigation. That would be a daunting task, because I have around 30 individual zones to water. I have managed to install drip lines in most of the garden beds, but the technology that would set up an automatic system eludes me.
When I first started gardening, I used soaker hose to irrigate. I found that most soaker hose only lasted a few seasons at best, and soon leaks would develop in one spot, while the pores would clog in another, resulting in uneven watering.
The drip lines I have recently installed have emitters established at preset intervals. A few years ago, I wanted to be really conservative with water, and I installed hose with a two-foot drip spacing for my squash and tomatoes. I was going to use every last drop of water. While the plants were young, it was effective, but as they grew, the size of the irrigated area wasn't enough to allow the roots to expand. Now I use an emitter spacing of no more than one foot.
I use two different diameters of tubing - a one-half-inch tube and quarter-inch tube.
The half-inch tube weeps at the rate of one gallon per hour per emitter hole. I put female and male hose fittings on it, and then I can hook an ordinary garden hose to it. I like to use a one-foot emitter spacing with this size of tubing, and each tube can run for at least a hundred feet, but it tends to kink around corners.
The quarter-inch tube weeps at the rate of a half-gallon per hour per emitter, and is attached to supply tubing. I use an emitter spacing of six or nine inches. Quarter-inch tube is very flexible and doesn't kink up like the larger tubing does, but each individual line must be fairly short, or the tube won't be able to carry enough water for all the emitters. It's ideal for raised beds.
If you've a mathematical bent (I don't), you can calculate exactly how much water you are applying. Most garden vegetables require about an inch of water per week. A gallon of water will cover 231 square inches, a little over one and a half square feet. If you calculate how many emitters are in the bed, and at what rate they flow, you can calculate precisely how much time you need to run the water in that bed.
If my math is correct - which it may not be - if you had emitters on twelve-inch centers, weeping at a gallon per hour, you'd need to apply 40 minutes of irrigation to that bed per week. This calculation assumes no rain - which is a valid assumption in Nevada. It also does not take into account factors like hot, dry winds which increase demand for water.
I am not mathematically inclined, so I use the finger method of watering. Every day, I poke my finger in each vegetable bed. If it's drier than the plants should be, I irrigate it for 10 minutes or so, longer for those "water deeply but infrequently" plants, such as larger trees and shrubs. I use the timer to remind me to switch the water.
The only difficulty with that method is that sometimes when the timer rings, I can't remember if I need to tend to the garden or take the bread out of the oven.
When Teresa Howell isn't solving complex math problems with her little finger, she teaches English at Great Basin College.
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