VLOG82. Profiling one of my main farm sites, we look at how much water was used for the 2016 season.
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I calculated an average of approximately 13 gallons a month per sq ft.
Your mileage may vary =)
Jeez, it costs £3 per cubic metre here, luckily it rains lots though – comparable costs are soooo much higher! Thanks for the breakdown Curtis.
Long time listener, first time comment. If you convert 1097 cubic meters to cubic feet, you get 38,740 cubic feet of water.
If you utilize the equation 38,740 cubic ft = 2984 square ft (x) , it will tell you how water you put on each square foot.
X in the above equation is about 13 ft. So, you put 13 ft of water on each square foot.
If you convert feet to inches, it's about 156 inches. Over the time period you say you irrigate (7.5 months or about 34 weeks), it means you were applying approximately 4.6 inches of water over every square foot of space every week. When looking at charts for water needs of different crops, most crops need approximately 1 inch of water every week. Now I'm not trying to tell a fellow farmer how to run their business, but I think you could save a lot of money by irrigating less. The math would say you could be spending $113 a year rather than $532 a year on water at this site.
Through a USDA grant, I put a flowmeter on our irrigation system this year to find out exactly how much water we were using on our own farm. Our 1 acre farm used almost the exact same amount of water as you did for this one plot (about 300,000 gallons).
Who knows, maybe I did all my calculations wrong and I'm actually a moron. If I am right though, save some of that hard earned cash and dial it back.
our water price Sydney Australia $2 AUD per kiloliter (cubic meter) = $1.45 USD
How far is the solar panel setup?
how do you agree how much to pay, where the landowner also uses water for their household? is it worth it to have a separate meter?
Keep in mind it's a semi-arid climate, pretty hot and dry throughout the growing season.
Thank you for making this video, it was the most informative video you have made for my situation (and I've seen all of your videos).
I'm blown away with the costs when applied to myself.
289k gallons will run you approximately $2,280 in the county I used to live in, but it would be in excess of $3,300 where I am now (more urban area). That also assumes you get a separate meter for the water not to pay sewage.
12 — 53' beds means $190/month per bed cost in the county — $275/bed in my more urban area.
I think this makes an incredible case to try to find a location closest to town possible with enough land and a water source such as a pond/lake/stream. I bet I could get the cost per bed below $10/bed with pumps. I live in an area that gets 40''+ inches a year.
Thank you again for the video.
thanks for sharing!
Holy god, you used about 266,000 gallons of water. That blows my fucking mind. Thanks for sharing.
I got a well thats shared with 3 other houses.
This question isn't relate to this video, but I haven't seen in any of your videos if you've said if you orient your greenhouses and beds north/south or east/west. I'm putting in a new greenhouse and beds and I see that you have beds going one way and greenhouses going the other. Which are which directions? Thanks in advance.
Wow, that is almost 4 vertical meters of water applied in a 7.5 month season…and you use ground covers too. Seems like a lot of excess. Is it a sandy soil?
I love the way your water measurements are metric but your beds are imperial. LOL So Canadian.
Thanks for sharing your numbers, really interesting and appreciate the data!
It's a long story, but local water prices are an area I nerded out on a few years ago researching a potential business idea. At least in the USA water prices are (unfortunately) not particularly correlated with local water availability. I'm in Portland, OR, and between our 8 months of steady rain, nearby snow pack, and large rivers, it'd make sense that municipal water would be cheap. But at least in the city we have some of the most expensive water in the country. For marginal use (not including flat fees) I pay $1.49/cubic meter. Sewer adds another $3.47/cubic meter, which is thankfully calculated from winter water use during the summer. From what I can tell, in the municipal scene (I'm sure rural is different), water prices are more related to infrastructure costs than availability. From my old research water is cheaper in many desert cities, such as Albuquerque, San Antonio or Phoenix.
Did you happen to keep track of how many lbs/kilos of produce you harvested off that field? That would be some nice information to have in this context.
Hey Curtis, got a question for you.
I want to get into urban farming but I currently live in a apartment and the patio has zero direct sunlight.
Question is, should I start by growing indoors/patio, wait until my fiance and I buy a house(maybe end of this year) or seek to trade/rent/lease some land to do urban farming?
Thanks -Phil
Curtis I think skunks are eating my pea seeds. Do you know what will keep then away?
Hi Curtis I need to ask your thoughts/advice on where I'm at with my urban farm more the point where I'm not?
Nice video 🙂 … we just finished a prototype for water usage in small/medium agriculture called #IrrigationManager available @ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1A6Fg9mkwx0Utbhy-73f8Qb2ypd03wEB-4EPrnxVa-TE/edit?usp=sharing
thank you curtis for all the videos. quick question about compost here: if i live in an appartment in the middle of the city, (i still have an outdoor space to put a compost bin), what is a good source of 'brown' material? i will have food scraps and a lot of soil with sunflower roots from the shoots i will be growing every week. thank you. and is it good to put the soil from every harvested sunflower shoot tray in the compost?
hey Curtis I have tried contacting you via your website but there has been no response. I ordered your book back on the 9th of February and I sent you an email inquiring it about a week ago. I still haven't received it or a response. please let me know if you're going to send it or refund my money thank you.
It's unreal how cheap your water is. That would cost me about $2400.00 here in WV.
Watching this video brings up the question for me: how do you sell/incentivize owners to let you farm their land? Do you pay the water bill? Do you pay rent? I'm sure you may already have a video covering this. Can you direct me where I could find more?
Wow… I pay 500$ a year just for my daily water use.. In Southern California.
I was expecting you to pay 10 times that honestly.
Speaking of free ride, you ever have a landowner whom you suspected were looking for a free ride in terms of veggies but somehow you always found yourself in a situation where you were always struggling to access their water? Some strange excuse always came up of why you have no access this time? If so, what did you do?
Utility water is $5.67 per 1000 gallons here in East Tennessee USA. We also get about 48" of annual rainfall.That comes out to 174,240 cubic feet of water per acre.
Hey Curtis good video, thanks! I have a question that isn't completely on topic; Can I reuse the water from vegetable washing to irrigate my plots?
Does the chlorine in the city water have an affect on the soil and plants after a while?
That same water consumption would cost about 4300 usd in Uruguay, south america (considering residential fees).
It is prolly caused by the government's monopoly of water.