Drip Tape Irrigation

[JackE]

Six kids! Lord have Mercy! That's great - but good luck on getting them to do farm work in the times we live in now. My wife and I have two boys and that was more than enough for us to handle! Be nice to your wife and behave - I'd hate to write THAT child support check!

I have a 100 gal trailer sprayer but I rarely use the boom on the back. Mostly I just use the hose and hand gun. With small areas like your's and mine - usually spraying only a few rows or etc - it's not practical to try and use the spray booms. That's for larger, single crop plantings. I'll use the booms if I have a whole acre at once - like pre-emergent herbicide before the tomatoes. I like the direct control I get with the backpack - never completely comfortable with the booms.

The sprayer is invaluable for applying liquid fertilizer - I can apply it most accurately right from the tractor seat using an ordinary garden nozzle and low pressure (20#) - 4 rows on each side of the tractor at a time. It's also good for keeping new seedbeds wet until they emerge and as a water source for mixing pesticides in the field.

Somebody said here a while back that you can't accurately apply pesticides with a back pack. Not true. Most the labels we use have mixing instructions for small areas with the stipulation not to exceed the max per/acre amount. You just have to do the math - An acre is 44K sq ft. but I use 40K for convenience (the error is on the side of safety) so I can do it in my head. So if I have 4k sq ft to treat, I simply apply 10% of the per/acre amount to that area. I have my backpack calibrated to my regular walking speed and can apply it just as accurately as with the spray boom - probably better, because I'm never quite sure just what's going-on back there at the boom - know what I mean? Nozzles plug-up, break, come loose etc - and with the backpack I have eyeball control.

If you don't want to calibrate the backpack by walking speed, you can mix the required amount - let's say the label calls for 6 oz/acre and you have 2.5K sq ft. That's 3/8oz oz to apply. So I put that amount in the back pack, add four gals of water, and make several rapid passes up and down the selected rows until the sprayer is empty. With the boom I'm never "quite sure", but with the backpack I KNOW what I put on there!

I never saw a label that prohibited backpacks as someone suggested here. They are, however, adamant about not exceeding the amount allowed per acre.

Jack

[clkeiper]

Jack

There is a drip tape specifically for undulating terrain, called pressure compensating drip tape, produced by a company called aqua-traxx PC. " A new drip to be used on field with varied elevations. Use u[ to 45psi." In my catalog( an amish greenhouse supplier) an 8mmx7500' is $224.10 per roll. I have no idea how competitive this is to where you are at and this place is mail order or stop in and pick it up place. No phones or computers.

And you certainly need a check valve for your well. even if it's not hooked up to a house. You don't want to contaminate the aquifer that you are pulling water from.

We used drip tape under black plastic mulch and a pressure injector for the hightunnels and the garden so we can fertilize the plants under plastic, but I have never seen the drip tape buckle in the garden from the heat or cold fluctuation.We also pull it up at the end of the season and toss it.

There should also be a tool that is available for cutting a hole in the header line specifically for the fitting size for your drip tape called a "punch". it has a beveled cutting edge that you just push up against the header tube and twist to cut the hole in the line. very simple. no mechanics to it at all. Comes in a .40 and .42 diameter size. looks like a gun without a trigger. Hopefully the next time you need to put this together it will be easier for you. Sorry to read the dogs got into yours, I think I would have done more than shot up in the air.
I have learned a lot reading this thread though, thanks for starting it. This was the first year we tried drip tape, but come to find out we lived in the monsoon area of the US. Maybe next year though it will be drier for us and wetter for you. We can pray!

Moon, I can't believe the price you got the pyganics for. I only laughed when my DH though about getting some as I had seen the price at a mere $546.40 for a gal. I was dumb founded at the price you quoted. I looked on the 'net and only found it at about 1/2 of that, but it was still way too much money for me. At 2 qts. per acre this could become extremely expensive.

[moon1234]

Originally Posted by clkeiper

Jack

There is a drip tape specifically for undulating terrain, called pressure compensating drip tape, produced by a company called aqua-traxx PC. " A new drip to be used on field with varied elevations. Use u[ to 45psi." In my catalog( an amish greenhouse supplier) an 8mmx7500' is $224.10 per roll. I have no idea how competitive this is to where you are at and this place is mail order or stop in and pick it up place. No phones or computers.

And you certainly need a check valve for your well. even if it's not hooked up to a house. You don't want to contaminate the aquifer that you are pulling water from.

We used drip tape under black plastic mulch and a pressure injector for the hightunnels and the garden so we can fertilize the plants under plastic, but I have never seen the drip tape buckle in the garden from the heat or cold fluctuation.We also pull it up at the end of the season and toss it.

There should also be a tool that is available for cutting a hole in the header line specifically for the fitting size for your drip tape called a "punch". it has a beveled cutting edge that you just push up against the header tube and twist to cut the hole in the line. very simple. no mechanics to it at all. Comes in a .40 and .42 diameter size. looks like a gun without a trigger. Hopefully the next time you need to put this together it will be easier for you. Sorry to read the dogs got into yours, I think I would have done more than shot up in the air.
I have learned a lot reading this thread though, thanks for starting it. This was the first year we tried drip tape, but come to find out we lived in the monsoon area of the US. Maybe next year though it will be drier for us and wetter for you. We can pray!

Moon, I can't believe the price you got the pyganics for. I only laughed when my DH though about getting some as I had seen the price at a mere $546.40 for a gal. I was dumb founded at the price you quoted. I looked on the 'net and only found it at about 1/2 of that, but it was still way too much money for me. At 2 qts. per acre this could become extremely expensive.

MGK, the maker of Pyganic, sells mostly commercial pesticides. My guess is the local ag companies have a negotiated discount with MGK for all of their products. Most of the online shops probably double the price. I was surprised and happy at the good price for the pyganic. This was for the 1.4 EC II product and not the concentrated stuff. Pyganic EC 5.0 II is much more expensive. The only benefit I could see was that it was more concentrated. Maybe the price you were quoted was for a gallon of the more concentrated stuff?

[JackE]

Ckl --

I did put-in backflow protection - double check valves - thanks to advice from my cyberfriend, Worth. The well I am using is just a few feet from the house well. We dug a new, deeper well when we built here in 1991 and the old one had been sitting there idle for 20 years. I was surprised there was still water in it.

I saw the punch in the catalog, but I think it's just for black tubing type material. All my feeder, main lines and manifolds are schedule 40, 2" PVC pipe - not because I need pipe that big, but because I tore-up an older gravity drip system and already had tons of that 2" PVC. Two of my zones are close to the well but the other three are 400+ ft away - the larger pipe helps in that case.

I guess you don't have the snaking problem because the tape is under plastic. The longer the run, the worse the snaking. I have some short -50' - runs and they don't snake as badly as the 100+ ft rows. I am using the 15mil tape and plan to use it year after year. Maybe that heavier stuff snakes worse than the 8mil.

Jack

[clkeiper]

Moon, The product in my catalog, I think, is the concentrated stuff. 5% pyrethrins/2 qts. per acre.

Jack, I am sorry, I must have read that you put this in with schedule 40, but it right thru the thought process. Duh! Yes we are using the black plastic manifold. Primarily we aren't using 100' rows either. so maybe the problem would be noticeable for us if we were, but since it is under p mulch maybe I wouldn't. We also have an 11# pressure valve on ours. I don't know if that makes any difference or not.

[JackE]

No, the pressure regulator is not a factor - as long as it has water in it, it pretty much stays put. But after the water is shut off it becomes a "living thing". :-)

Jack