My water is short this year, how do I plan irrigation across the whole season to get a crop?

When water is short for the whole season, the goal shifts from watering everything fully to spending your limited water where it returns the most grain or fruit, and there are several pieces that work together. First, match the crop and area to the water you actually have: it is better to grow a smaller area well, or a less thirsty crop or a shorter duration variety, than to sow a big area and run dry at flowering. Second, know your crop's critical or moisture sensitive stages, usually early establishment, flowering, and grain or fruit filling, and make sure water is there at those stages even if you stretch the gaps elsewhere; this is the heart of saving water without losing yield. Third, cut waste at every step: level the field so water reaches the whole plot evenly, switch from flooding to furrow, alternate furrow, sprinkler, or drip which all cover more area with the same water, and mulch the soil to slow evaporation so each watering lasts longer. Fourth, store and capture water you would otherwise lose, through a farm pond or by catching your canal turn, so you have a buffer for the critical stages. Fifth, judge each irrigation by the soil, using the simple squeeze test in the root zone, so you never waste a watering when the soil is still moist or miss one when it is dry. Deficit irrigation, meaning deliberately giving a little less at the non critical stages, can save real water with small yield loss, but it has to skip the right stages, not the critical ones. Because the exact critical stages, the deficit you can risk, and the best crop choice all depend on your crop, soil, and how much water you have, sit down with your KVK or agriculture officer and make a season plan rather than deciding day by day, and ask about any farm pond, drip, or leveling subsidy that would stretch your water further.