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  • From: Shawnee Flowerfarmer <farmingflowers AT hotmail.com>
  • To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Pumping water from a stream or pond
  • Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 20:01:15 -0500

Ditto the text below on iron-currently from a well.  But wow....what a struggle.  I'll be thinking of you as I hassle with clogged emitters.

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