Practical guides for farmers
Most irrigation advice assumes you have land, a river, and a reliable water table. Pacific Island farmers get none of those. You get a thin freshwater lens floating on seawater, a few months of reliable rain then months of nothing,…
If you farm in Guatemala’s Western Highlands, you know the pattern. May through October brings 1,500 millimeters of rain. November through April gives you almost nothing. Your soil cracks open, coffee trees stress, and by March you’re praying for rain…
Nobody builds a greenhouse hoping insects will move in. But here’s the thing: a greenhouse is basically a bug resort. Warm, humid, loaded with food, zero predators inside. You’ve given thrips, whiteflies, and aphids everything they need to explode. I’ve…
Herbs are the cash crop that drip irrigation was made for. They’re high-value, shallow-rooted, and unforgiving when it comes to wet foliage. A basil leaf with overhead water sitting on it for six hours might as well have a “welcome”…
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…
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…
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…
Carrots are picky about water. Not in the way tomatoes or peppers are. Those crops wilt dramatically when they’re thirsty and you get a clear signal. Carrots punish you silently. You won’t know you got it wrong until harvest, when…
