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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Pumping water from a stream or pond

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  • From: Barking Cat Farm <barkingcatfarm AT mindspring.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Pumping water from a stream or pond
  • Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:19:13 -0500

Cannot speak to the stream issue, but wanted to put in my $.02 re: surface
ponds. We have been fighting clogging problems with our barbed
self-installed emitters for a year and a half and still don't have a good
solution. We originally ran 1/2" poly pipe off of PVC headends, then
installed barbed emitters at each plant in our blueberry field. We have an
overabundance of filamentous algae in our pond and high iron (which is ideal
for the growth of iron bacteria) which never has given us any problems with
t-tape or pre-fabbed emitter pipe. But those barbs clog pretty regularly. I
have to walk the field once a week and clear the clogged ones, and there are
always clogged ones. We've started replacing the barbed emitters with T
connectors, off of which we run a 5' or so length of pre-installed emitter
tubing and curl it around the plant. This is the best work-around we could
come up with after an extensive (and ongoing) search for a way to better
manage the algae and iron. For one thing, as somebody else has pointed out,
having algae and other active biological factors in the water is in general
good for the plant. The other thing was every treatment option we could find
was going to be horribly expensive in terms of up-front cost, ongoing cost
such as electricity, or both. While managing the algae is going to be a
challenge no matter what, the iron is the real problem for us. It is the
harder of the two to control without spending a lot of money, and it is the
iron bacteria which I actually end up cleaning out of the barbs. We filter
at the pressure tank outlet and regularly flush our lines, but it's just
impossible to keep up.

Let us know what you end up doing,
Laurie
Zones 7&8, where it is 100+ in the forecast as far as the eye can see. The
meteorologists keep teasing us with tales of upper 90s and/or possible rain
several days out, but so far they haven't been able to deliver.



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