Drip irrigation is an efficient method of applying water in containerised nursery production, but the number of arrows per container, Mean Application Rate and pulsing need to be considered in designing and managing these systems.
Maintaining the best possible water quality in a nursery water storage is essential to provide a safe and reliable irrigation water source. Farm water storages are generally balanced and diverse ecosystems, containing microscopic plants and animals, aquatic plants, and an abundance of larger animals such as fish and insects. The entry of nursery wastewater can severely impact the balance of this ecosystem, providing environmental conditions that can be ideal for the growth of many aquatic weeds and algae.
Nursery irrigation practices are energy intensive, requiring significant volumes of water to be pumped to meet crop water use demands. Careful, well informed equipment selection, guided by irrigation professionals, coupled with a scheduled maintenance program and intelligent water management techniques, can help growers gain significant irrigation system efficiencies and minimise energy costs.
Paying attention to the correct installation, operation and maintenance of a new pumping system will pay dividends in having an efficient system with a long service life. This article outlines some of the factors that should be considered when installing, operating, assessing and improving pumping systems.
The availability of good quality irrigation water in sufficient quantities is necessary for all nursery production. While the physical availability of water is obvious, water regulations add another layer of complexity that must be navigated through to ensure adequate water is available for irrigation, and that environmental impacts are minimised from both water use and drainage water quantity and quality.
Due to the large variations likely to be encountered in surface, underground or drainage waters, regular monitoring of water quality is a must. Regular water testing is one of the easiest things that nurseries can do to manage their water quality, and knowing the physical, biological and chemical characteristics of a water source is an absolute necessity.
Effective management of water quality in nursery water storages is essential in providing a safe and reliable irrigation water source. These videos from BioRemedy show the importance of managing water bodies, and techniques that can be used to improve stored water quality.
‘Water retention efficiency’ is the capacity of a potting mix to retain water from an overhead irrigation. This property influences nursery water consumption by determining how long pots must be irrigated to replace lost water. This Nursery Paper details the results of an Australia -wide survey on potting mixes and describes a simple procedure for nursery operators to do their own water retention efficiency testing.
There are a number of different irrigation system types used in production nurseries. This handout, from the Irrigation Systems in Action Field Day, summarises the advantages, disadvantages and critical design considerations for different irrigation systems used in production nurseries.
Production nurseries require a water supply that is reliable, low cost and of excellent quality. To achieve the water quality demanded by nursery production, many water sources will require some level of disinfestation
The process of selecting a sprinkler and establishing an irrigation system for a particular cropping situation requires a small amount of research and investigation, and can be broken into a number of simple steps.
Nursery irrigation pumping can consume considerable amounts of energy and be a significant cost for production nurseries. Growers often move water multiple times for irrigation, transferring between storages, pumping through disinfestation systems, moving into storage tanks and finally, pressurising irrigation systems. Poor pump selection and installation can lead to poor performance, high energy costs, premature pump performance decline and mechanical failure.
Efficient irrigation systems deliver real economic benefits to a nursery. The aim of any design is to apply enough water evenly to meet all plant needs in the time available. This webinar details the requirements for designing a nursery irrigation system to provide even water application, save money in capital and running costs, save water, and meet the management constraints necessary to run the nursery
This tool calculates the Mean Application Rate (MAR) and appropriateness of a drip or spray stake irrigation system for the selected growing media and container size.
Description: Fertigation is the application of dissolved fertilisers through an irrigation system and can be a useful way of controlling plant growth. Fertigation is a simple and effective management tool which is relatively inexpensive to set up and operate.
Bottom watering systems are the most water efficient method of nursery irrigation. There are a number of different systems used, but all have the same principle of water entering the growing media through the drainage holes in the bottom of the container. The following describes the different bottom watering systems.