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…
Most drip irrigation systems run on a timer. You set it in May and don’t touch it until September. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Same duration, same start time, same amount of water, every single week. It’s the default because it’s easy.…
What satellite NDVI actually tells you that soil sensors miss Soil moisture sensors tell you what’s happening at one point. A tensiometer buried 12 inches deep in row 47 tells you about row 47. Nothing about row 52, the low…
A soil moisture sensor sitting in the ground is about as useful as a thermometer you never look at. The whole point of buying sensors and hooking them up to a controller is that the system makes decisions for you.…
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…
Most farmers I talk to irrigate on gut feeling. They walk the field, squeeze a handful of soil, look at the sky, and decide. It works until it doesn’t. A hot week you didn’t catch, a rain that came after…
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…
If you’ve ever walked through a citrus grove in July and seen fruit splitting on the tree, you already know what inconsistent watering does. Citrus trees are drama queens about moisture. Too dry for a week, then a heavy irrigation,…
Most farmers I’ve talked to set a drip irrigation schedule and then leave it alone. Same runtime, same frequency, from transplant to harvest. It makes a certain kind of sense. The crop looks fine. Nothing is wilting. But “not wilting”…
You can drop $2,000 on a set of research-grade soil moisture sensors and still get readings that steer you wrong. A vegetable grower in central California installed six sensors across a 20-acre tomato field, followed the data religiously, and ended…
