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--- garden:cultivate:tasks:water:drip:tape [2017/08/24 09:01] – davidbac
+++ garden:cultivate:tasks:water:drip:tape [2017/08/24 09:37] (current) – davidbac
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+===== 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.)