Dry summer guerillas! How do you provide irrigation?

[BACKCOUNTRY]

I don't think it would be likely that a animal would try to dig into a rez to steal water, but who knows?

Garbage cans were my first resivours, and I will be using them again. By far the best "small" resivour is a large plastic barrel. They come in 50 or 55 US gallons in my country, and are often originally used to ship Fruit juice and other foods. They are probably not in danger from chewing pests, and are pretty light to haul around considering how much they hold.

My next favorite would be 55 gallon steel drums, but they are often used for dangerous chemicals, and are prone to rusting if not carefully painted or lined on the inside. Plus they are kinda heavy, but they can be quite cheep, $10-20 typically. Once one is cleaned, painted and in place, they could last for years.

Bladders are a great thing, and would be very ideal overall, except the price scares me away everytime.

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

Passive method of irrigation

Passive method of irrigation

Another way I have heard of growers getting around irrigating by hand or machine, is by using a passive irrigation method using a resivour and wick. It was featured in a old edition of High times magazine, and I heard it mentioned on OG here, several growers claimed to use it with great sucess, but I never saw any pics of it in action.

Essentially it consists of a burried resivour (usually a 55 gallon drum), with a planter placed on top of it, a wick(s) is run from the planter to the bottom of the rez. The wick keeps the soil at a stable level of moisture.

The predominate method seemed to invole cutting the top half of the drum off, which was flipped over and placed on top of the bottom 2/3rds of the barrel burried in the ground, the top became the planter, the bottom the rez. I imagine for those with out access to steel drums, gabage cans and other containers could be used.

The idea is to store enough water in the rez to sustain the plant through the season, and apparently most were able to do this. I imagine the ammount of water needed to do this would be vastly different dependant on the conditions they are used in.

Does anyone have experience withthis type of apparatus?
I've decided I would like to finally try this myself, it seems very plausable that it would work great.

I need to get out and start setting up resivours, and get them all filled with rainwater while the rainy season is in full swing.

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

Yep, yep, good idea, those water bottles are nicley thin skinned.

 

[Dignan]

Just a random idea... the way I came upon using the camp shower pictured above is that a wilderness firefighter friend recommended the 10-gallon water-carrying backpack that they are issued. I found them online, but they're easily $150-200. For someone like me, forced to hump water, it would be perfect.

But BC, if you're in an area where you can dig deep and where a catchment tarp isn't going to be seen by hikers, hunters or aircraft, humping water to your plants is probably silly, as you have a dozen other options.

peace-

Dig

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

Hmmm, thats a interesting idea! Can't say I have heard of such a thing, but I can see how it could be very effective.

Perhaps a similar thing could be done by making the entire center of the planting hole (from the plant to the bottom) pure perlite, making the roots trip to the bottom unhindered, and fast.

 

[Dignan]

Not a bad idea. Place 2" PVC in the center of the hole, fill in with soil all around the PVC, fill PVC with perlite (or a perlite/vermiculite/coco mix), remove PVC leaving a "core" of perlite.

 

[Tirs]

I've heard of people on other gardening sites taking a 4" or 6" PVC pipe and sharping the end like a bit. On the other end drill two holes and put some kind of dowel through and you have yourself an auger of sorts. The dirt that you 'drill' stays in the pipe so you can make some deep holes, pull out the pipe, empty it and then fill in with whatever you want. I think the guy was using it to plant tulip bulbs but this thread has me thinking now that it might be useful for making 'wicking wells'. What would be the best substance to fill the 'core', as Dignan called it, with?

I'm surprised mulching hasn't been mentioned yet. Its easy, cheap and works.

I do have a question about Wilt Pruf. If it works by decreasing transpiration wouldn't it drastically slow down growth?

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

I like to use heavy ammounts of "water crystals", as well as adding moisture retaining organic materials to the soil (Peat, Coco coir, very mild composted manure, etc). I also like to mulch the ground ontop of the plots, to help keep the soil cool while the sun beats on it, slowing evaporation.

I actually did mention mulching in my title post.

What is your idea with this "wicking well" ?

Ultimatly, your best bet if planting straight in the ground is to make sure your hole is deep and optimized for fast root growth to begin with.

You want to make sure your soil has a good softness or lightness too it, compacted soils are your enemy, especially ones that are pure clay or pure sand.
Adding extensive ammounts of organic materials(extremely mild compost, peat, Coco coir) helps loosen pure sand soils and clay soils. Perlite and vermiculite help loosen clay soils and also gives roots room to breath.
Of course if you are very serious about it, digging a 2' deep hole, and completely replacing the native soil with a purchased or homemade potting soil would be a sure way to get the roots moving down fast.

Wilt pruf doesn't seem to prevent passage of gases, only water.

 

[Tirs]

I actually did mention mulching in my title post.

Ah, my fault.

I looked into antitranspirants and this is what I came up with.
http://ohric.ucdavis.edu/Newsltr/CTC/ctcv19_4.pdf
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=366040&blobtype=pdf

Antitranspirants seem to certainly be effective but, there seems to be a consensus that they do retard growth somewhat. The first article calls the amount growth is slowed negligible at one point however. This is what was really interesting:

Prior to spraying on August 3, all of the fruit grew at about the same rate, but between August 3 and harvest on August 21, there was a 30% increase in fruit growth for trees sprayed with Mobileaf antitranspirant (Fig. 1). This resulted in a 6% increase in final fruit volume (P < 0.05).In other experiments, effective film-forming antitranspirants produced significant increases in (a) fruit size of olives (Olea europaea), and (b) shoot growth of oleanders (Nerium oleander).

They attributed this to the increase in water potential due to lowered transpiration losses. I wouldn't mind a 6% increase in yield...

As for the 'wicking well' I was thinking of something along these lines
PVC about 6' down using the 'auger' technique shouldn't be hard at all. If your hole is 2' to begin with, then your tapping into moisture 8' down. I think you could remove your drilled soil and then put the PVC back in place and fill it with something that wicks well. You wouldn't lose any moisture on the way up because of the plastic sheath, and for people with shallow water tables the amount of water they could wick up would be pretty significant I think, or I am completely off here?

 

[gr0wm4g3]

Alot of good ideas in this thread for the guerilla grower Keep 'em comin fellas

@Tirs - Couldn't you just use a hemp rope for the wick for that idea?

 

[Tirs]

I'm sure you could but, I would still keep it inside the pipe so that if surrounding soil is dry it doesn't soak up the water before it reaches the plant.

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

Its a cool looking idea, but I just don't think you are going to reach the water table in most places without a more substantial auger.

JJscorpios idea was more about getting a young plants roots down closer to the modestly moist soils that exist a 1-3' below most garden soils. Its just a quick way to get a young plants roots down deep.
Using a actual wick is not the idea here, the idea is to provide the young plants roots with a quick trip down from the drier surface. Hence the soft loose core of perlite to facilitate fast root growth.

 

[LORD BENIS]

It's dry here... desert actually, but the season is different from yours: May and June are scorching hot and very dry, right when you're trying to get seedlings/young clones established... so during May/June you have to be on the ball with watering.

Ditto. ^^^

I start indoors and when they're ready to transplant I hump them out to my site. You have to be very mindfull of light cycles if you do this or else you'll end up with 6 inch flowering plants. My plots are fairly similar to your's Backcountry. I find spots fairly close (a few hundred yards) to seasonal creeks/streams and set up my kit.



The timer is set to run 3 minutes every few days depending on season, temps, etc. I can run this system one of two ways:
A. Run a two-way splitter off the timer and attach drip hoses. In this style the plants are arranged in a row and I just lay a hose on either side of the plant's main stem.



B. Run a four-way splitter and have four hoses go to four big plants. I attach drip hose once the regular hose has reached the pot and circle it around a few times.

Either way the plants need to be below the res for it to work properly. But, I can deliver any seasonal rainfall that gathers nearby with my trusty pump. It hooks up to a battery and fills my res in about an hour. A little slow, but not too bad considering it's pumping water ~300 yards away at a 10 foot head. I've found a good camping backback to be an absoulte must for any serious guerilla grower. They're great for cramming in hose, baby plants, nutes and all the other bullshit that seems to be necessary for the job.

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

Great post! Its good to see this stuff in action! Sorry about your crop, did it ever recover?

I use a lightweight internal frame pack for hiking now, so I like to use my huge heavy duty external frame packs for hauling gear, and water if needed. For scouting trips where I will be covering lots of territory, a lightwieght book bag carrys my evaluation gear.

What are you using for a rez? Is that it under the pump in the one picture?

Is the system gravity fed?

 

[Guest]

I'm at an area where I can only visit once a week or so, and while this should be frequent enough, I went ahead and took a one litre water bottle, bored a small hole in the cap with a knife(pin-sized), filled it with some (hopefully ph-balanced) water, turned it upside down, and stuck it right in the middle of my plants. The next day, not a whole lot of water came out, but I imagine that if the soil dried enough, it'd drip out when needed. They also sell things like these that work alot better than homemade

Not super guerilla though..I mean..it's a bigass water bottle sticking out of the ground.

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

Slowing down the water to a drip can help more of it stay in the area, rather than running off. Its not a lot of water, not even for one plant alone, but its a start!

 

[LORD BENIS]

Yup, that's my res under the timer/pump. It's a 75 gallon rain barrell. And yes, my set-up is gravity fed, plants downhill from res.

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

Another way I have heard of growers getting around irrigating by hand or machine, is by using a passive irrigation method using a resivour and wick. It was featured in a old edition of High times magazine, and I heard it mentioned on OG here, several growers claimed to use it with great sucess, but I never saw any pics of it in action.

Essentially it consists of a burried resivour (usually a 55 gallon drum), with a planter placed on top of it, a wick(s) is run from the planter to the bottom of the rez. The wick keeps the soil at a stable level of moisture.

The predominate method seemed to invole cutting the top half of the drum off, which was flipped over and placed on top of the bottom 2/3rds of the barrel burried in the ground, the top became the planter, the bottom the rez. I imagine for those with out access to steel drums, gabage cans and other containers could be used.

The idea is to store enough water in the rez to sustain the plant through the season, and apparently most were able to do this. I imagine the ammount of water needed to do this would be vastly different dependant on the conditions they are used in.

Does anyone have experience withthis type of apparatus?
I've decided I would like to finally try this myself, it seems very plausable that it would work great.

I need to get out and start setting up resivours, and get them all filled with rainwater while the rainy season is in full swing.

I'm still looking for anyone who has seen or done something like this??

 

[Gantz]

that's a LOT of hard work imho

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

So is packing water 2-3 times a week on your back, its time consuming too. Actually its lots more time/labor consuming.

I do think the 55 gallon drum may be more than is needed, I'm thinking my version will use a smaller, shallower rez like a 18 gallon tote, I'll group 3 plants to a area and have a backup rez uphill from them in case I need to siphon more water to the individual plants resivours through the season.