Saturday, September 25, 2010

Irrigation: The second sweetcorn plot


This time we will look at the whole season in one go rather than the week-by-week unfolding story. I will use the usual headings of IRRIGATION; WATER; NITRATE; SALT.
The new sweetcorn plot was irrigated with water made as salty as the washing machine water. But this time I used common table salt (NaCl) to increase the salinity of the water. Being planted later, the second crop experienced quite different growing conditions. The two plots can now be compared.
The graph above shows the rainfall and irrigation ratio (irrigation/ETo) for the second sweetcorn crop (NaCl). This plot was planted 25 days after the plot grown with washing machine waste water described in the previous posts (top graph).
The second plot received a lot of early rain and took a week longer to mature as it grew through late summer/autumn. Total ETo for the season was 371 mm, rainfall 246 mm and irrigation just 55 mm.


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