Using drip with rotational canal supply, storage options, and scheduling around limited water windows.
3 Answers
Drip and rotational canal water can work together, but the trick is storage, because drip wants a steady small flow over long hours while the canal gives you a big slug of water once every several days. The usual answer is to store the canal water when it comes, in a farm pond or a lined storage tank, and then run your drip from that stored water through your pump on the days the canal is dry. This decouples your irrigation schedule from the canal turn. You size the storage to bridge the gap between canal turns for your area. Canal water is also often silty, so you must filter it well, typically a sand or media filter followed by a screen or disc filter, to protect the drippers. If you cannot store, you can still drip directly during the canal turn, but then you irrigate only on those days and lose the main advantage of frequent small doses. A farm pond for this storage is supported under PMKSY watershed and the drip under Per Drop More Crop. Confirm the farm pond and micro irrigation subsidy and procedure on your state portal, and tell your vendor the water is canal water so they size the filter correctly.
I built a storage tank that fills on the canal turn and drip runs off it for the dry days. Without storage drip and canal rotation do not match.
Filter the canal water well, it is muddy. Sand filter plus disc filter for me, else the drippers clog within days.