occurred in April and average daily rainfall for May was 0.1 inches

per day. Total rainfall for June was 8.34 inches. Normal rainfall

amounts for March, April, May, June, and July are 5.23, 4.89, 4.28,

5.22, and 6.90, respectively (Davis and Mickelson, 1969). There-

fore, the normal average daily rainfall during the growing season

of spring planted tomatoes in Gadsden County is 0.17 inches per

day. However, rainfall in individual years can vary widely from

the norm as shown in Figure 1. Tomato plants in Exp-3 were grown

under a transparent rain shelter in order to provide a better

estimate of actual water use by tomato plants.

 Rainfall (Inches/day) Rainfall (inches/day)
 1 2.5
 Expflment ExpWlment
0.8 2x. Exp. 21
 E Exp. #2 V Exp. #2
0.0 1.6

0.4 10

0.2 i | I I 0 I |

Ap-4 17 19 23 24My-8 9 11 12 14 16 1 17 19 21 22 27 29 31 Jn-26 7 13 14 15 1 177 0 1 20 21 22232426 2 27Jy-13 4 5 7 8 10 11
 Day of Month Day of Month

 Figure 1. Rainfall for exp. #1 and exp. #2 from 1 April to 15

 July.

 Tensiometer scheduling provides irrigation at approximately

 the rate of plant use. Manual and automatic drip irrigation

 treatments used about the same amount of irrigation (Fig. 2). This

 was expected and verifies the effectiveness of the switching

 tensiometer. Total irrigation for the drip system was about 10

 inches compared with almost 39 inches for the sprinkler system.

 The sprinkler system, with no runnoff allowed, was only about 25%