ThinkWater Hawke’s Bay and Netafim NZ installed buried drip irrigation in Block 2 in April 2013.

The laterals were buried 200mm deep spaced 0.762m apart (that’s 30 inches – a standard process vegetable and maize crop row spacing).

1L/h compensating drippers spaced at 400mm intervals gave an application rate of 3mm per hour and a system flow rate of 4.2 L/s.

We were able to deep rip between the laterals using RTK-GPS and True Earth Organics’ rippers mounted 762mm apart. This was done twice.

In August 2014 the system was improved by adding flushing manifolds.

Ritchie from ThinkWater finishing the flushing valve installation on the buried-drip in paddock 2

By 2016 soil movement from cropping operations had changed the topography making the lateral effectively much more shallow. A hoeing operation to create an onion seedbed damaged a significant amount of the lateral tubing.  Given the lateral was on a different AB line to the rest of the MicroFarm (established after the drip irrigation was installed), we removed the drip. The control system is to be relocated to Paddock 7, a small trial area adjacent to the main blocks.

We are grateful for the support of Anthony Waites at ThinkWater Hawke’s Bay for this aspect of the MicroFarm irrigation. Thanks, too, Netafim for supplying componentry.