# Drought



## farmer (Jul 17, 2012)

How is the drought effecting your vineyard?
I am in Minnesota it is getting dry but it is not a disaster yet.
I am thinking to start watering this week end.


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## Minnesotamaker (Jul 18, 2012)

Southern MN here. Vines are 5 years old, so roots go fairly deep. I'm near a pond, so the water table is fairly high. So far so good, but we don't need any more dry stuff. Grapes are heavy on fruit, light on vegetation. Not sure if it is heat related or not.


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## garymc (Jul 18, 2012)

I'm in Southeast Missouri. I've been planting (and replanting) muscadine vines since last winter and spring. Of 41 vines in my vineyard, at least 6 have died and several of the rest are struggling. I say at least 6 because I counted 6 empty spots, but some died earlier in the spring and I replaced them. I had no cool, rainy spring here. The drought has been going on since winter. I thought the 85-90 degree weather in April would nicely bring the vines out of dormancy, but no rain came with it and I was slow to realize how desperately recently transplanted vines coming out of dormancy need rain. I was watering at the time with buckets. This summer we've had the 3rd highest record number of days over 100 degrees. Normally when we have hot weather and a drought, we have high humidity, which is miserable for people, but not so bad for the plants. Less evaporation, and some occasional dew. But this time the humidity has been really low. My vines are in good muscadine soil, sandy and very well drained internally. I've been watering since April. I got my irrigation system put together in May, but didn't get the kinks worked out of it until July.


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## Brew and Wine Supply (Jul 18, 2012)

I am still watering my 100 new plants with buckets and water jugs, just watering the new ones, the three year olds seem to be doing ok but fruit is drying up into raisins. I am about 100 miles north of Gary.


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## ibglowin (Jul 18, 2012)

Being in the desert southwest mine are all on a drip system with a timer. 45 mins of H20 a day like clockwork.


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## Brew and Wine Supply (Jul 18, 2012)

Mike, how many GPM is the drip system?


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## ibglowin (Jul 18, 2012)

Each head is a 1GPH pressure compensating. Timer is set for 45 min a day so each vine gets ~ 0.75 gallon of water a day. I have 120psi water pressure from a county MUD. Needless to say I have plenty of pressure and actually have a pressure reducer to keep the drip heads from popping off the drip tubing. :<


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## winemaker_3352 (Jul 18, 2012)

ibglowin said:


> Each head is a 1GPH pressure compensating. Timer is set for 45 min a day so each vine gets ~ 0.75 gallon of water a day. I have 120psi water pressure from a county MUD. Needless to say I have plenty of pressure and actually have a pressure reducer to keep the drip heads from popping off the drip tubing. :<




Mike - how does that affect your water bill??


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## ibglowin (Jul 18, 2012)

I have 5000ft2 of Kentucky Blue that gets irrigated every other day for almost 3 hours! That drip system is a "drop" in the bucket as they say. My water bill in peak Summer is ~$140. Less when the monsoons kick in and I can shut things off for sometimes as long as 2 weeks at a time.


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## BobF (Jul 18, 2012)

My water is $3/1000g above the baseline. My normal average is 5000g/mo. My last bill was for 11000g, so an increase of $18.


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## UBB (Jul 18, 2012)

I have a separate well on the property that I use to irrigate although my drip system is experiencing technical difficulties at the moment. I also have a 55gal plastic barrel I fill up with water in such cases. It's dry but I'm not panicking yet.


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## SLOweather (Jul 19, 2012)

BobF said:


> My water is $3/1000g above the baseline. My normal average is 5000g/mo. My last bill was for 11000g, so an increase of $18.


 g=gallons? Are you sure your bill isn't in cubic feet? At 5,000 gallons per month, that's only about 176 gallons per day, which is low for 2 or more people for in house use only.

However, at 5,000 cubic feet, that's 37,400 gallons per month, or about 1,250 gallons per day, a more reasonable number for someone irrigating tin the summer.

Most utilities bill in cubic feet, or "units" which are 100 cubic feet.


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## SLOweather (Jul 19, 2012)

The drought hasn't really affected us much. We're in a Mediterranean climate and don't get any appreciable rain from April or May until September/October or later. 

We're establishing vines for dry-farming, so I water them deeply about 1x per week. The vineyard is over on the far hill, away from any water lines. I've been taking 45 gallon drums of water over in the Mule and hand watering.

Last weekend I installed a 55 gallon drum and a drip system. Now I Mule the water over and pump it into the drum, open the drip valve, and let it run til it's empty.


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## BobF (Jul 19, 2012)

I am absolutely, 100% positive on both my usage and how I'm billed. I do NOT use high-volume irrigation; drip and soak only.



There are two of us. I have removed all flow restrictions from shower heads


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## ibglowin (Jul 19, 2012)

Ours in in gallons. Our utility company has a nice feature that shows consumption for the past 12 months. As you can see ours goes down to almost nothing in the Winter and balloons in the Summer. Just 2 household members so its almost all irrigation in the Summer


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## SLOweather (Jul 19, 2012)

Hmm, I wonder if my watercompany shareholders would use something like that if I programmed it...


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