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Author name: Tony Tavares

Drip Irrigation on Processing Tomatoes – Worth Farms, Huron, CA

Leave a Comment / Drip Irrigation News, Tomatoes /

Chuck Herrin manages Worth Farms in California’s Westlands Water District. Founded by his grandfather, a custom harvester turned farmer, Worth Farms today grows 4,500 acres of drip irrigated crops including 3,500 acres of processing tomatoes.

“Our best-ever yield on conventional sprinkler/gravity acreage was 64 tons/acre in 2004. five years later, we are achieving 50-100% increases in yields with drip, and an overall average of 65 tons/acre operation wide. On top of that, water, labor, fertilizer, and herbicide savings are substantial. We used to apply 36 inches of water per acre to meet a crop ET of about 18 inches. Now, we only apply 24 inches of water, a 33% savings. At the same time, we have cut labor use by half, and fertilizer use by a third. This is significant.”

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Naumann Ranch, Oxnard, CA – Drip Irrigation on Mixed Vegetables

Leave a Comment / Mixed Vegetables /

Mike and Brian Naumann are young farmers with a daunting legacy to fulfill: the family has been growing vegetables in Ventura County since 1898. But the Naumann brothers are not ones to buckle under pressure, and have adopted a “can-do” attitude to successfully farm 800 acres of mixed vegetables in a volatile, ever changing market. The secret to their success?

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Craig Andrus Farms, Salinas, CA – Drip Irrigation on Lettuce

Leave a Comment / Drip Irrigation News, Lettuce /

Craig Andrus is no stranger to sprinklers, but has been using drip on his 400 acres of romaine lettuce, Southeast of Salinas for over four years, now. He used to have a linear, but when it came time to replace it, he noticed the trend towards drip and made the change.

“My yields are higher, the crop is more uniform, and the quality is better because of perfect growing conditions.”

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The Advantages of Closely Spaced Emitters

Leave a Comment / Advantages of Close Emitters, Drip Irrigation News /

Choosing the right drip tape emitter spacing can be more of an art than a science. This is because of the many variables that exist in each farming application, including tape placement, soil type, crop, plant population, soil and water salinity, tape quality and cost, etc. Fortunately, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s recent Drip and Micro Irrigation Design and Management Manual, published by the Irrigation Training and Research Center (ITRC) in 2007, provides a great deal of guidance for this important decision. In particular, the new manual discusses how closely spaced drip tape emitters can enhance salt management for seed germination, leach salts in permanent crops, and dilute soil salinity for salt sensitive crops. In addition, the manual highlights some of the agronomic and economic disadvantages of using widely spaced emitters.

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Typical Drip Irrigation System Layout

Leave a Comment / Drip Irrigation News, Typical System Layout /

The “Typical Drip Irrigation Layout” illustration has been developed to help those who are unfamiliar with drip irrigation understand basic drip irrigation system components and concepts. The drip irrigation layout illustration is organized into two halves. First, the “headworks” portion of a drip irrigation system shows the typical water sources, pumps, filters, chemical injection equipment

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Benefits of Drip Irrigation on Potatoes

Leave a Comment / Drip Irrigation News, Potatoes /

Drip irrigation is a mainstream technology in dozens of other crop production systems throughout the world because it allows producers to evenly spoon-feed precious water and nutrients directly to every plant’s root zone despite variable soil conditions, undulating terrain, odd field dimensions or long lengths of run. But potato producers have been slower to adopt drip since there are significant changes in bed configuration, agronomic decisions, and planting and harvesting equipment that go along with this technology.

Despite these challenges, cutting-edge producers, suppliers, and researchers are coming up with viable answers in hopes of bolstering the potato industry against the inevitable vagaries of the market, economy, costs, and resource availability, and are discovering significant benefits in adopting drip irrigation for potato production.

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Drip Irrigation on Cotton

Leave a Comment / Cotton, Drip Irrigation News /

Loyd Jordan is a 3rd generation farmer who cultivates 3,500 acres southwest of Lubbock in Terry and Lynn counties, Texas. He irrigates 1,250 acres with pivots and, most recently, 300 acres with subsurface drip irrigation. A neighbor had tried drip and said good things about water savings, getting increased yields on fewer acres, and how easy it was to apply fertilizers and control insects. So in 2004, Jordan installed 40 acres. He liked it so much that he installed an additional 120 acres in 2007, and then another 140 acres in 2009. Now he prefers drip to the pivots he has used for so many years.

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Greenhouse & Nursery Drip System

Leave a Comment / Drip Irrigation News, Greenhouse /

The greenhouse and nursery business has a profound affect on general agriculture and landscape plantings around the world, in addition to fresh fruit, vegetable and flower production.  This is because high density nursery and greenhouse plantings are often replanted on much larger tracts of agricultural or landscape land later, and/or reflect significant revenue sold fresh. 

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