As is suitable for a diversified farm, a diverse bunch of items have arrived in the last couple of days: this year’s last batch of baby broilers; some new packing crates for veg; pipe and fitting that will make irrigating the market garden so much easier; and tents that we’ll be using for holiday rentals.
What irrigation setup do you have?
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Best,
Richard
Love this. Thanks Richard. At Norwich FarmShare we inherited a bore hole with pump so we have, in theory, unlimited water, but pressure erratic. Generally fine but we can’t irrigate the whole site at once. We have overhead and drip in tunnels. In our first year we used the inherited irrigation system which was two long horizontal pipes with impact heads attached about 12″ above the ground. These did 360 degrees and provided good coverage but we had to move them around when we wanted to water a new block. Very time consuming and heavy so only suitable for people who could do heavy lifting. This year Jack has installed a new system which is a massive improvement but still has some issues.. We grow on blocks of 9 beds. Each block has two posts in the paths between beds 5 and 6 with hoses and impact heads attached to them. These work ok though we can only have one block on at a time because of the pressure. We have 3 blocks next to 3 blocks etc. this works for the central block but on the two blocks on the outside we either get the corners not being watered or the grass on the edge of the plot gets watered. We should have set it up with heads on the outside bed on a 180 degree pattern. I’d like to experiment with wobblers or using those risers – do you have a link for the ones you got so I can compare with what’s available locally? Our drip is also a bit unsatisfactory. it gets blocked up easily by limescale or bursts because of too high pressure but not sure which drip tape would be better as we have limited experience of different types. I’d be interested to hear any comments. Thanks. Joel.