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garden:cultivate:tasks:water:drip:tape

Drip tape for row crops

For 2017 I added drip irrigation to the Fall City garden for the various row crops, peas, lettuce, kale, chard, spinach, carrots, beets, turnips, cabbage, and a few others.

Tape vs. mainline with emitters

At the farm water drips from discrete emitters placed about 5 feet apart to coincide with individual plants, summer and winter squash, melons, pumpkins, peppers and tomatoes. The branches off the 3/4“ mainline were 1/2” tubing with emitters spaced according to the distance between plants. The exception was for the gangly grape vines, whose water needs I expected to be greater than squash, melons and pumpkins. I placed an emitter on either side of the vine about 15 inches away.

At the Fall City garden I grew row crops with individual plants spaced about 8 inches apart. The 5/8 inch drip tape is better suited to the closer spacing and the total irrigated length of about 650 feet. I used 1/2“ mainline tube to service the rows of tape.

Drip tape

At the garden I used drip tape, chosen for a low flow through build-in emitters spaced 8 inches apart. Once plants were established this spacing provided a broader base of moisture that spread from emitter to emitter and sideways for up to 15 inches.

Drip tape and direct seeding

Direct-seeded plants require additional moisture until they get established because their tiny roots sometimes don't get moisture for germinating. I could have made sure that seeds were very close to the tape, but that would have put some plants too close together once they were established.

I don't direct seed many crops (mainly root crops and spinach), so this wasn't onerous.

Configuration

I planned on having crop rows separated by several feet of walkway area. This turned out to be the very least distance between rows.

I pondered spacing of the drip lines within rows for some time before I put down a strip of tape. Initially, I anticipated having two lines of tape 24 inches apart serving 4 rows of plants. Each pair of rows was to straddle one of the lines of tape.

My first transplants were lettuce and it became clear that a better spacing between the pair of lines was about 18 inches, so I adapted later lines for chard, kale and radish.

The spacing that I intended between pairs of lines for root crops (carrot, beet, turnip) seemed more appropriate at 20 inches because of the greenery they generated.

The decision to have multiple rows of plants with multiple lines of drip tape was based on several factors:

  • Ease of reaching between plants for weeding and harvesting
  • Maintaining wide lanes of irrigated soil
  • Efficient use of space
  • By guess and by golly from hours contemplating how to lay out the tape

I'm confident that I will use similar guidelines newt season.

Obvious success

During the 2017 season crops remained healthy and productive after successive harvesting. Specifically, the crop of Rainbow chard was the finest I have grown and is still going strong as we enter September. (After a serious attack by leaf miners, the plants have recovered and are almost flawless.

Lettuce varieties remained fresh and healthy well into the warmest summer weather, when most went to seed.

Drip tape for corn

Normally, I expect the sweet corn at the farm to get all the moisture it needs from dew and roots that reach down to the moisture. However, this year I anticipated a dry summer so I added a line of drip tape for each row of corn. I used the same drip tape as in the garden with emitters spaced at 8 inches. I spaced corn at 20 inches apart to give each plant unhindered access to soil moisture over a wider area than if they were planted a typical close distance. (Given a history of unusually dry summers I adapt with techniques from dry-land farming.)

garden/cultivate/tasks/water/drip/tape.txt · Last modified: 2017/08/24 09:37 by davidbac