A lychee tree looks tough. It is a tall evergreen that shrugs off the heat of a Guangdong summer and happily sets fruit in places where a peach would wilt. Underneath that leathery canopy, though, sits one of the most…
The cashew is the tree farmers plant because it refuses to die. It holds up through a six-month dry season that would flatten a mango, and that reputation is exactly the problem. Because cashews survive drought, almost nobody waters them,…
Passion fruit looks like a tough plant. It climbs a trellis, shrugs off heat, and fruits almost year-round in the tropics. Under that easygoing surface is one of the most drought-sensitive vines a farmer can plant. The roots are shallow,…
Most guava farmers in India, Mexico, and Brazil treat their trees like cacti. The tree is genuinely tough. An established guava will sit out a dry season on a deep taproot and still push out a thin, small crop of…
Most people hear the word “cactus” and assume you can stick it in the ground, walk away, and come back to a harvest. That instinct will ruin a dragon fruit orchard. Dragon fruit (Hylocereus undatus and its red-fleshed cousins, sold…
Coconut is one of the few crops where drip irrigation is still the exception, not the rule. Something like 90 percent of the world’s palms never see a drop of irrigation water. They get rain, and when the rain stops,…
Drip irrigation for coffee is the rare system that has to do two opposite jobs in the same season. First it has to withhold water, then it has to pour it on. Get the first part wrong and your trees…
Papaya is a strange crop to irrigate. It drinks like a sponge and dies if its feet stay wet. A mature tree in hot weather can pull 40 to 60 liters of water a day, yet flood the root zone…
Pineapple is a strange plant to write a drip irrigation guide about. It’s a CAM species, which means it does its gas exchange at night instead of during the day. Its stomata stay shut while the sun is up. The…
Mango trees are funny about water. Give them too much at the wrong moment and they put out a flush of leaves instead of flowers. Give them too little a month later and the young fruit drops off the panicle…
