Container Irrigation Tool

This tool is designed to provide sprinkler irrigation run times for a range of plant production conditions typically found in an outdoor, commercial container nursery. Because daily irrigation demand varies with weather, the tool automatically acquires weather data from a FAWN (Florida Automated Weather Network) weather station to estimate irrigation run times. The FAWN weather station can be automatically selected based on the user’s current location or can be manually selected from a drop-down list. Besides weather, daily irrigation demand is affected by plant production conditions in the irrigated area. For this tool, plant production conditions include container size, container spacing, plant size, percent plant cover, and irrigation application rate. The user can set default production conditions for trade 1 and 3 gallon containers so that irrigation run times can be quickly acquired for their particular situation. Irrigation run time outputs are clearly displayed on the main page for a range of container spacing arrangements. On the main page the user can override FAWN rainfall with rain recorded on-site to provide a more accurate irrigation recommendation.