Menu
Napa Green | Champion Story
Efficient, targeted irrigation benefits both your bottom line and the quality of your fruit, ensuring vines get the right amount of water at the right time. Here are the benefits of irrigation efficiency:
The Napa County Resource Conservation District (RCD) received grant funding to assist growers with low- to no-cost services that improve vineyard irrigation efficiency and scheduling. These include a comprehensive “Irrigation Toolbox” and the “Mobile Irrigation Lab” (a core component of the Toolbox).
The Irrigation Toolbox
The full-scale Irrigation Toolbox is a new service that will be offered to five growers to help them with consultation, tools and technologies to holistically evaluate and improve irrigation volume and timing.
The Irrigation Toolbox is customized and RCD staff will work with each grower for two full irrigation seasons to help with ongoing monitoring and use of the equipment. The RCD will release a request for applications in April. Please note there is a cost-share component.
The Mobile Irrigation Lab
Any grower can request the Mobile Irrigation Lab. The Lab provides rapid evaluation of irrigation efficiency and uniformity throughout the vineyard. It identifies ways to improve water use and irrigation system performance, which improves vine health. The evaluations focus on Distribution Uniformity (DU) – how evenly the irrigation system is delivering water throughout the vineyard block.
The assessments require the grower to run a normal irrigation set on a standard irrigation area where the grower has some concern or wants to gain additional information for that vineyard. Each grower will commit to participating in the evaluation (2-4 hours), which is considered the “cost share” component.
Schembre has worked with small growers and large vineyard management companies to develop custom protocols. This includes Renteria Vineyard Management, which manages several Napa Green Land sites. The evaluation can be particularly helpful for those managing multiple vineyards over broad areas.
Contact Frances Knapczyk, frances@naparcd.org, to learn more about the Irrigation Toolbox and/or sign up for your free evaluation of irrigation efficiency and uniformity.
Napa Green is a global leader in sustainable winegrowing, setting the highest bar for sustainability and climate action in the wine industry. Napa Green facilitates systematic soil to bottle certification for wineries and vineyards, and provides the resources, tools and connections to continuously level up leadership. In 2021, Napa Green was the first sustainable winegrowing program in the world to redevelop Vineyard certification standards to focus on climate action, regenerative carbon farming, and social equity. In 2022, Napa Green and community partners launched the first of its kind, six-event RISE Climate & Wine Symposium (formerly THRIVES) with over 65 leading speakers and 40 “Sustainable Services & Solutions” partners and sponsors.
Wednesday April, 23rd is the day NOT to miss
