Most irrigation pumps run the same way they did in 1980: on or off. The motor spins at full speed, a pressure switch clicks it off when the tank fills, and the cycle repeats a hundred times a day. It…
Supplemental lighting is one of those greenhouse investments where the decision tree looks simple on paper but gets tangled fast once you dig in. HPS is cheaper to buy. LED saves on electricity. Pick one. Except then you find out…
Cut flowers are a high-value crop. A single healthy stem of a specialty sunflower sells for $1.50 to $3.00 at farmers markets. A bucket of 50 lisianthus stems can bring $40 from a florist. When you’re selling stems by the…
Farming above 3,000 meters is not like farming anywhere else. The air is thin, the sun is brutal, the slopes are steep, and water is either a glacial trickle or a seasonal flood. I have talked to farmers in Peru’s…
Most greenhouse growers I talk to think about irrigation in terms of water delivery: is the crop getting enough, is the EC in range, are the drippers clogged? That’s half the picture. The other half is what your watering schedule…
If you’ve got a farm pond with a geomembrane liner, at some point you’re going to walk out there and notice the water level is lower than it should be. You’ve got a leak. I’ve talked to growers who spent…
I spent a morning last summer watching a neighbor’s orchard sprinklers throw water onto a gravel access road. He’d swapped in whatever nozzles the local supplier had in stock. Half of them were running at pressures they weren’t designed for.…
Polish apple grower Marek Kowalski runs 12 hectares in the Grójec region. His water bill in July 2023 hit €2,400. This July, after switching half his orchard to drip, it was €1,650. When the full 12 hectares convert, he expects…
If you’ve ever cut open a section of drip tape at the end of a season and found it coated in green slime, you already know the problem. If you haven’t cut one open yet, you should. What’s growing inside…
A greenhouse is a closed environment. That’s the whole point. It traps heat, blocks pests, and lets you control what happens to your crop. But sealing the place up also traps one other thing: a shortage of carbon dioxide. Plants…
