Proof of Concept - water management
 

Firstly a big thank you for accepting my membership and its great to know about this forum focused on tomato growing and discuss the nuances of it.

Let me introduce myself... Was working as cybersecurity lead in one of the largest financial institutions, quit and plunged into full time farming profession in 2012.

What made me do this? An experiment to build a self sustainable ecosystem, completely offgrid, with acute focus on water management. So I had this old farm handed over by my father, once a very rich biodiverse farm witha perennial creek, with literally wild animals living in the farm! This is how it was when I used to visit thr farm on summer vacations in the 70s and 80s. We used not venture into some areas as there were too many poisonous snakes and leeches.

2012 to 2016 - Series of severe draught since 2005, to an extent of just one 10mm rain 2016, the creek completely dried up, most of the trees all dead and gone, spiky bushy shrubs replacing the flora, all the fauna literally wiped out except for some wild bores, rodents and some snakes! Deep borewells to suck high TDS salty water for survival.

In 2017 Jan, setup my first greenhouse to grow vegetables using precision agriculture methods with a goal to use less than 10% of water when compared to traditional farming. I call this a proof of concept (PoC) and my first crops are 4 varities of tomato and 2 varities of salad cucumber.

Sown on March 15th, the cucumbers r already yielding and the tomatoes are about a foot high.

I am looking forward actively participating in this forum and exchange best practices for the benefit of all. My contributions shall be in all matters related to the farm and agriculture if allowed.

Thanks once again for accepting my membership and my best wishes to one and all.

Warm regards
MohanUrs

Welcome, mohanurs!

It seems that you are having to deal with issues that most of us don't. I have a question. Since you are growing in greenhouses that are(?) relatively isolated from the outside environment, are you doing anything to recapture the water vapor transpired by the plants? E.g. running dehumidifiers to take the water out of the air? (Could that possibly be cost effective?)

Or has the drought eased?

Welcome, MohanUrs! I don't think we have too many members from India so far, so it will be interesting to hear about your farming practices and experiments. It sounds like you are working with challenging conditions and have some good ideas on overcoming them. :)

[QUOTE=dmforcier;635514]Welcome, mohanurs!

It seems that you are having to deal with issues that most of us don't. I have a question. Since you are growing in greenhouses that are(?) relatively isolated from the outside environment, are you doing anything to recapture the water vapor transpired by the plants? E.g. running dehumidifiers to take the water out of the air? (Could that possibly be cost effective?)

Or has the drought eased?[/QUOTE]
Hi, I find the RH% inside the GH when foggers r off, tend to hit the bottom and the plants suffer from excessive dehydration and start wilting. So primary concern here is humidification so that I can atleast maintain RH above 50% during the day. I recently rigged up an Aurdino microcontroller based temperature and humidity data logger. Now I am working on a controller to trigger the fogger motors on a trial and error frequency to achieve moderate RH consistently during the day.

[QUOTE=ddsack;635516]Welcome, MohanUrs! I don't think we have too many members from India so far, so it will be interesting to hear about your farming practices and experiments. It sounds like you are working with challenging conditions and have some good ideas on overcoming them. :)[/QUOTE]
Thanks and its indeed a challenging condition out here. The temperature these days is hitting a peak of 42 C (107F) inside the polyhouse, and the foggers consume 5 times more water than the drip system. So I redesigned my polyhouse with lot more ventilation and now planning to fix fans with humidifiers to circulate humid air within the polyhouse. Will update the results once tested

[IMG]http://www.tomatoville.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=72182&d=1493533903[/IMG]

Here is an interpretation slide from the data logger.

[IMG]http://www.tomatoville.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=72184&d=1493533903[/IMG]

PS: there is a typo in point 4, read it as 30 to 50% RH

[IMG]http://www.tomatoville.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=72183&d=1493533903[/IMG]

Welcome, MohanUrs! It sounds like you are having nice success! We hope to hear more about your effort!

Thanks philagardner, hope to succeed in 2017, so far its been just tiring years of labor... But one thing I can say is its far better world being a grower emotionally, health wise and ethically, when compared to the corporate world I was thriving in.

A rodent menace! Have lost over 500 saplings due to borrowing rodents under the mulching and weed mat. Suggestions which r not health hazards r welcome.

Are shotguns considered health hazards? ;)


Rats, or have you not identified the varmints?

[QUOTE=dmforcier;635658]Are shotguns considered health hazards? ;)


Rats, or have you not identified the varmints?[/QUOTE]
Well the rodents are the burrowing type, they r never visible on surface ground, so shotguns r ruled out. These r the bigger bandicoots what we call them in India

Hydroponics offers the most frugal use of water resources.

Yes sir, I have borrowed some learnings from hydroponics in my project. My next experiment will go 100% soilless and later plan to dabble in aquaponics too. But all this can happen only after my commercial success as a grower ;)

I have played with both hydro and aquaponics. But I happen to have such rich soil, that it is much more feasible to just grow in the ground.

Fish waste is almost entirely nitrogen, so aquaponics is great for growing lettuce. But for tomatoes and other fruiting crops, I think you would need to mix additional fertilizer with the fish water, and then set the tomato plants up as run-to-waste, like a typical container.

Humates and humic acid, which is what makes compost or rich soil have a dark color, also shows promise in helping plants make the most of water resources. Rich soil requires less water, I know that from experience.

And I haven't tried it, but yucca extract is also used on plants to help them survive droughts. Fertilizer companies also offer what is basically synthesized yucca, for use as a spray.

Thanks for sharing your experience Cole_Robbie. I guess nothing can beat the balanced soil. There is a company in Bangalore which has demonstrated using combination of biochar, humic n fulvic acid, trees were grown in a arid terrain with rainfall of less than 10mm per annum. They have agreed to ship me the samples. Will update the results

That is really cool. Humic and fulvic acid are great stuff. A friend of mine makes bio-char from pine needles.

And by the way, if English is not your native language, I certainly can't tell. If it is a 2nd language for you, then I have to say that you command it very well.

Oh my english! getting Christian convent education in my formative yrs and 25 yrs of work experience in global companies just rounded my language skills enough to do business communication.

Made some 100 kgs of charcoal last month with firewood, need to powder it and innoculate with various soil bacteria anf nutrients to make biochar.

Interesting. I have made aerated compost tea before, out of my very best soil. Molasses, or any sugar, is combined with water, and an air pump added. After about two days, bubbles foam up, indicating high bacteria count. Whatever good bacteria you have, you can culture them exponentially greater in an aerated tea.

Quite a knowledge, I do use aerators in my water tank to keep away the algae formation.

Tried doing the same with cow dung, a handful of wet soil, sugarcane juice and some malt like corn floor or rice floor, but it became messy n smelly. Stopped preparing it, have to design a cleaner system with filter, so that I can use the compost tea through drip.

Thanks for your inputs. You can always participate in my whatsapp group, I call it proof of concept by mohanurs. The invite link is here [url]https://chat.whatsapp.com/81zACpJVZQG1QLBiuQlo5f[/url]

We get next to nothing on the news about the drought in India.
How are the poor doing there not good I would think.
Worth

The reality is, its terrible, unfortunate, our media loves to cover sensational topics and ignore the reality. Fresh water scarcity will peak in the next decade. Water conservation has to be made mandatory for farmers. My goal is to build proof of concepts with acute focus on water management, and zero pesticide.

[IMG]http://www.tomatoville.com/picture.php?albumid=430&pictureid=2530[/IMG]

Tomato variety Valouro beef steak from Rijkzwaan, NL,

Wow! That's a big greenhouse. The plants look pretty good. I think you're on to something.

Thanks I will get back with you on water conservation in this thread.

But I have to ask here.
If you know anything about Indian food could you start a thread on it in the cooking section.
Everyone here knows how much I love food from all over the place.:lol:
Worth

Yes, its a 22000sft (2000 sqm) greenhouse, holding 4000 tomato saplings and 2000 cucumber vines.

[QUOTE=Worth1;636085]Thanks I will get back with you on water conservation in this thread.

But I have to ask here.
If you know anything about Indian food could you start a thread on it in the cooking section.
Everyone here knows how much I love food from all over the place.:lol:
Worth[/QUOTE]

Indian food! Done let me open a new thread with some spicy Indian recipes :panic:

[QUOTE=mohanurs;636041]The reality is, its terrible, unfortunate, our media loves to cover sensational topics and ignore the reality. Fresh water scarcity will peak in the next decade. Water conservation has to be made mandatory for farmers. My goal is to build proof of concepts with acute focus on water management, and zero pesticide.[/QUOTE]

Wonderful goals! Wishing you all success. :yes: