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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Growing algae in irrigation water?

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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Growing algae in irrigation water?
  • Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2011 08:06:34 -0500

On 11/19/2011 5:14 AM, Dieter Brand wrote:
Hi, I have a request which may be a little strange and perhaps there
is no real answer to it. Anyways, it does occupy my mind:

I live in a semi-arid region with a prolonged and severe dry season.
So, every drop of water I can save counts. I have a spring up in the
mountain and several water holes which together provide just enough
water to irrigate about half an acre during the dry season, if I use
it very sparingly.

I recently hit on the idea of letting the irrigation water run
through open channels or a series of containers where, under the
light of day, algae would form in the water. I do believe that these
algae would have a beneficial effect on the irrigated soil.

The problem is that I don’t want to expose the water directly to the
sun since I don’t want to risk that any of it evaporates. What would
be the best way to construct such waterways? Should I cover them
with some sort of semi-transparent shading cloth that is permeable to
air? Or should I use transparent glass or plastic that isn’t
permeable to air? I don’t want the water to heat up under the glass
or plastic. But if I use a shading cloth, I’m not sure that none of
it will evaporate. As I said, I can’t afford to loose a single
drop.

Shade it to keep it from heating up and put plastic over it to prevent evaporation

alternate: run the water into a small pool or pools, containers, ponds where you have many aquatic plants growing including duckweed which will completely cover the water surface, shading it and preventing much evaporation - you will get nutrients from the decaying plant material - you might get algae growing too but it will need nutrients to survive and the duckweed will also feed on those nutrients and outcompete the algae to dominate the water surface - introduce fish, snails and other organisms that thrive and coexist with other inhabitants of a freshwater environment. As for quality of plant nutrients in the output of the impoundment this may be better than water from algae culture.





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