Irrigation Scheduling

Scheduling irrigation is an important aspect of irrigation water management during the growing season. Weather variability, differences in soil water holding capacity and the change in crop water use with growth all play a part in good water management. We have developed three irrigation scheduling tools for your use:

1. A publication that explains the basics of Checkbook Irrigation Scheduling.

2. An electronic downloadable copy of an Excel Spreadsheet version of the Checkbook Method, a Users Manual, and for those that want to know the inner workings of the spreadsheet, a technical article that was published in Applied Engineering in Agriculture

3. Crop water use tables are available under “Applications” on North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network (NDAWN) website (https://ndawn.ndsu.nodak.edu) for 10 irrigated crops in North Dakota. During the growing season, this application calculates the estimated daily crop water use for each crop at each station on the NDAWN system using the weather data collected from that station. The estimates are updated automatically each day during the growing season. This makes the crop water use estimates site-specific to the geographic area where the station is located.”