In previous years, we used spray stakes to irrigate our outdoor plants, but even at 2 per plant they only wet a limited area, leaving much of the bed dry in Oregon’s arid summer climate.
This year, I’m trying to wet as much of the area as possible, to keep the bacteria and fungi alive throughout instead of confining them to little oases - without splashing water more than about 14" above the ground. Yeah, that’s the tough part
I’m experimenting with shrubblers, micro sprinklers, drip tape, and soaker hoses, but haven’t found the perfect balance between cost and usability.
Drip tape is by far the cheapest to buy, but the labor costs and delay involved in laying 3.4 miles of the stuff to get proper coverage isn’t appealing, and I don’t know if there’s a venue for recycling it in my area.
Micro sprinklers and shrubblers are great and keep the water low, but they’re expensive and workers moving through the canopy can easily kick them loose without noticing.
Soaker hoses are really expensive for this application and also create a lot of plastic waste.
I’m leaning toward shrubblers at the moment, and I want those plants in the ground YESTERDAY…anyone have a good low-profile wide-coverage irrigation solution?
@FarmerK What kind of filtration do you go through before pushing teas through the drip tape? I’ve always been warned off of using 1/4" dripper line when pushing anything other than water due to clogging… Seems like you have it figured out!
Multiple high-flow feed halos for each plant may be an option.
Are we talking beds or rows?
How many sites?
How tall do your plants become and how deeply rooted?
What size pot would you estimate each plant would need to be grown in? 25 gallon? 100 gallon bag?
Hi,
Drape tape works well. flat or round.
Water is super important. I can’t stress how awesome a drip system would make a difference even with plain water.
Bury it into the ground under the plastic or fabric mulch with Hemp Dress.
Add Dosatron Systems so you can make concentrate tea’s and inject into the drip lines no electricity needed. While you stay at home and enjoy life.
I have an Amish Farm running compost tea in there drip lines right now.
Even the Amish know to do it right!
Kyle M
I ended up installing these micro-sprinklers, a few days after I posted this, and I’m very pleased so far.
They’re about 9" above the ground on stakes. The deflector keeps the angle low - virtually zero water goes higher than 10" - and they have surprisingly even coverage in a 4’+ circle. The aperture is 1.4mm, so particulate from teas etc. doesn’t clog them and nematodes pass through without getting beat up too much
The plants are in triple staggered rows under hoops. There are roughly 1600, and they’re in native soil heavily amended along the lines of a Clackamas Coot mix. Below the top 8", the soil is very heavy clay, which is part of the reason I want to keep the whole bed irrigated and alive for the roots to spread through. Not counting the clay, they get the equivalent of about a 100 gallon pot worth of soil each
@FarmerK - I love drip tape for my lettuce and whatnot at home, but it isn’t practical for this whole-bed approach. The labor to install it, probability that workers would step on it to the point of damage, the chances of clogging, and the enormous plastic waste killed that idea for me
Hi, nice job.
We like to keep it simple and cheap.
This is 1 of the overflow fields.
Took half dozen of us in 1 day to set this irrigstion.
Not including the Injector and Cyclone Tea Brewer.
About a half day to go back and tune it and fix leaks.
Only issue we had so far was deer kicking the drip line and pulled a few connectors out but the deer don’t eat our hemp so all good. @netafim. We used tape here for the drip lines at about 50:1 with 1gph emitters. Vegan Organic Compost Tea.
80psi, reduced to 40, then reduced to 10psi.
There is a large watering Boone at the farm but we don’t use boones. We use the well and the motor and set this up on the fly. Early July here.
When you have 80k extra hemp seedlings and need to do something fast, this is what we did.
Key to Life dry power water soluable nutes. No filters needed.
Just a screen from the well before going into the Injector. Little sandy the well water here. Elemental Organic Compost Tea.
We use Cyclone Tea Brewer spins like a water spout with a Synergize pump. The solution re
mains homogenized and no floaty crap or tiny drip tspe to clog. We use Nitrite instead if Nitrate and no additional phospahtes which also prevents salt build up and clogs.