I learned the hard way about canvas irrigation hoses about six years ago, helping a friend set up a half-hectare vegetable plot in the Rift Valley. We needed to move water 300 meters from a storage tank to the field.…
Last July, a tomato grower outside Riyadh showed me his drip lines at 2 PM. The air was 47°C. The polyethylene tubing was hot to the touch, not quite softening but close. His emitters were still delivering 1.6 liters per…
Here’s a number that should make you uncomfortable: in Kansas, 85% of all water diverted from ground and surface supplies goes to irrigation. That water sits on just 14% of the state’s cropland. In return, those irrigated acres crank out…
The easiest way to tell if an emitter is clogged Step-by-step guide to clearing and replacing clogged emitters Walk your drip line while the system is running. Look at each emitter for about three seconds. A working 1 GPH emitter…
A farmer in northern Kenya told me something last year that stuck. He’d installed drip irrigation across two hectares of tomatoes and was still running his pump 9 hours a day during the dry season. His neighbor, with the same…
How to Keep Your Drip Irrigation System Running Like New (Without Losing Your Weekend to It) I’ve been installing and fixing drip systems for over a decade, and here’s something that surprises most people: the number one reason drip irrigation…
I’ve lost count of how many farmers have told me the same story: they spent good money on drip tape and mainline tubing, laid everything out perfectly, turned on the water. Half their fittings popped off within the first hour.…
What Happens When You Don’t Store Your Irrigation Water Most farms I’ve visited that rely on seasonal rainfall or inconsistent well output have the same problem: they run dry exactly when crops need water most. You can have the best…
The invisible problem with surface drip Here’s a number that keeps me up: American farms pulled 47 percent of the nation’s total freshwater withdrawals between 2010 and 2020, according to the USDA. That’s nearly half of all the fresh water…
The moment you realize half your emitters aren’t dripping Step-by-step guide to diagnosing and fixing clogged drip emitters You walk out to the garden on a Saturday morning and something’s off. The tomato bed looks dry. You crouch down, poke…
