Water News Archive

While we can’t ever control or even predict the weather, it is important to have a plan on how to deliver water to our home gardens during the hot, dry months of the summer. While Nebraska may be the capitol of crop irrigation systems, many home gardeners don’t give quite as much thought about water management and delivery in their home vegetable gardens or landscapes. Aside from reducing water need through some good management practices, delivering water in an efficient and sustainable way is important when planning and planting our home gardens. 

Roughly half of all neighbor complaints of livestock odors originate from land application of manure. A weather forecast and a little knowledge of odor dilution can be a powerful tool for keeping your neighbors happy, or at least avoiding those irate phone calls. Picking the right weather conditions for land applying manure, may not improve your popularity in the community, but it can go along way with improving your community’s acceptance of livestock systems.

Management is the key to keeping dust under control. By using some basic dust control techniques, open feedlots can prevent or minimize the problem.

Rain gardens are an aesthetic feature of your residential landscape that also has a hydrologic function. Hydrologic means related to water. A properly designed and constructed rain garden for a residential landscape (no underground drainage system) is designed like a bathtub to hold water and let it slowly seep into the soil beneath the garden. This water is available for plant growth, and this water is removed from runoff that leaves your yard and does not contribute to downstream flooding or pollution.  How well does your rain garden serve its hydrologic function?

Do you know how much water your crop is using on a daily basis?  When I ask this question most guys tell me somewhere between 0.20 - 0.40 inches per day.  Sometimes they are close but wouldn’t it be nice to know for sure?  It is rather simple to figure out if you have the right tools.  An atmometer, such as the ETgage®, is what you need to calculate reference ET.  ET stands for evapotranspiration.  This is the amount of water evaporated from the soil and plant surface and transpired through the plant.

Because of a growing concern about manure irrigation, the University of Wisconsin Extension assembled a workgroup to research the concerns. The workgroup included scientists, public health specialists, state agency experts, farmers, conservationists and others. Over the course of two years, the group gathered and studied the science of manure irrigation, which culminated in a report that contains findings, responses and recommendations. This article will review a few of their findings related to bacterial transport as well as highlight some of the reasons why a farmer might opt to apply manure via irrigation rather than other ways.

When designed properly, runoff holding ponds, lagoons, and other earthen manure storage structures are sized to contain manure, process wastewater, and storm water that drain into or fall on them throughout their designed storage period. Excess precipitation, particularly chronic wet weather, can lead to concerns about storages overflowing even when they have been managed correctly.

The arrival of spring, warm weather and sunshine brings a flurry of activity around your acreage. Annual plantings are done, mulch is purchased, spring cleaning is completed and the mowing season begins.  All of those things are done annually to maintain homes and yards.

In the overall “holiday” turf fertilization schedule, where Arbor Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day and Halloween are indicators of good timing for applications to cool season turfgrasses (Kentucky bluegrass, tall fescue, perennial ryegrass), early summer is a key timeframe for encouraging healthy growth.  When growing warm season turf species such as buffalograss and zoysiagrass, Memorial Day is perhaps the most important time to apply fertilizer, perhaps followed by a light 4th of July application if a lawn is thin or in need of recovery.

With spring weather finally in the forecast, I get excited thinking about my gardening activities for the summer. One of the things that is always on the front of my mind is watering. Will this be another dry year, a normal year (if Nebraska even has normal), or a wet year.

National Drinking Water Week is held in May each year to bring attention to important water quantity and quality issues and their relationship to drinking water supplies.  The attention to drinking water during that week provides an opportunity to learn more water resources in general and also serves a reminder to think about where your water comes from.

Manure is often viewed by many as an environmental liability. However, if manure is applied at rates equal to or less than the nitrogen (N) requirement of a crop, can manure produce environmental benefits over commercial fertilizer? This was the focus of an Asian research group which summarized the results of 141 published studies from Asia, Europe, and the U.S. comparing manure substitution for fertilizer. This article summarizes the “Take Home Messages” from this research paper.

Winter cereal rye planted as a cover crop has been shown effective in capturing nitrate before it leaches from the root zone. We conducted on-farm trials in central and southern Minnesota to determine if a rye cover crop would capture significant root-zone nitrate in the fall and spring but release it in time to maintain yield in the subsequent corn crop.

Boating season is once again upon us and it is time to remember to clean, drain and dry watercrafts, angling equipment and any other items that come in contact with a waterbody between uses.  Zebra mussels, an invasive small mussel species, can live out of water for up to 2 weeks in the summer time in the right conditions and cleaning, draining and drying watercrafts and equipment for at least 5 days before launching in a different waterbody is pertinent.  Currently there is no effective way to eliminate 100% of zebra mussels from a waterbody so prevention is key. 

With a tip of the cap to National Groundwater Awareness Week, which was March 11-17, the landscape and gardening industry must do their part to prevent groundwater and surface water pollution on the properties we manage.

Planting for Water Savings Spring will be here before we know it, which is very exciting for plant enthusiasts. We can get outside and do some cleanup once it starts to get warm. Don’t get too excited though, winter could still show up for a couple more months. One thing you can do now, though, is plan your garden. Choose Well-Adapted Plants

Spring will be here before we know it and that means enjoying the outdoors! Its time for kayaking, swimming and fishing. And, if you are a pond or lake owner, it's time to think about what kind of management strategies you will use for your pond or lake this year.

National Groundwater Awareness Week