Drip irrigation systems and techniques
If you grow stone fruit, drip irrigation pays for itself faster than on almost any other orchard crop. Peaches, plums, cherries, and apricots all share one trait that makes drip such a clean fit: the crop you pick next summer…
Saudi Arabia and the UAE grow food on some of the hottest, saltiest, most water-starved land on earth, and they still export dates and greenhouse tomatoes to Europe and Asia every year. Drip irrigation is the tool that makes it…
Bananas drink more water than almost any crop you can name. A single banana plant in the tropics can pull 10 to 15 liters a day during peak growth. Over a full season, an acre of bananas in a hot…
Blueberries are the diva of the fruit world. They want acidic soil. They want shallow, consistent moisture. They want water that won’t push the soil pH up. And if any one of those things goes wrong, they punish you with…
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,…
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…
Potatoes are picky about water. Not in a dramatic way. They won’t wilt at the first sign of dry soil like lettuce will. But get the moisture wrong and the damage shows up where you can’t see it: underground, in…
If you farm on sandy soil, you already know the feeling. You irrigate in the morning, and by afternoon the top six inches are bone dry. The water doesn’t hang around. It pulls straight down like someone pulled a plug…
Watermelons are 92% water. That fact alone should tell you something about how much irrigation matters for this crop. But plenty of melon farmers still run furrow irrigation and call it good enough, or switch to drip without adjusting their…
