[Community_garden] Requiring drip irrigation

[yarrow at sfo.com]

At 8:39 AM -0800 11/30/07, Dwight wrote:
>....Are there any gardens where drip irrigation or some
>other efficient means is required?  Any gardens with
>individual water meters per plot?
>
>I figure if people paid according to their own use, it
>might keep the cost down.


The annual contract for the community garden where I have a plot 
expressly forbids drip irrigation. Some gardeners have it because 
they put it in before the rule was in place. A couple more may have 
gotten special permission. I think the intent was to avoid automatic 
watering, or to avoid situations where an unattended automatic 
controller is preventing someone from watering their own garden 
manually (because of insufficient water pressure or monopolized hose 
connections). In the summer, it's common to have very low water 
pressure in the morning and early afternoon.

The volunteer coordinator does go around with hose washers and 
occasionally turns off leaky or unattended hoses (also against the 
rules).

The whole garden (about 150 plots) doesn't even have its own meter. 
It's on the same meter as the library on the other side of the 
parking lot, with its huge lawns. When we were contesting a huge rate 
increase, we tried to get an estimate of how much water the garden 
uses as opposed to the library lawns, flushing toilets, etc., so that 
we could negotiate ways to reduce water use. As far as we could tell, 
the city's estimate was not fact-based.

Very few of the gardens use mulch to reduce water needs, though we 
always have a healthy supply of mulch available.

Did I mention we're in a summer-dry climate?