Irrigation

My last post, was about my plans to plant a very small plot of land, next to where i live on the farm – mainly with salad leaves or herbs. I took a picture, before i weeded and dug the soil. I am happy to say, i have just planted my very first salad leaves and herbs. And a picture paints a thousand words, which is about how many seeds i have sown actually. So here it is in all it’s glory, my plot revisited:

Top right: My friend’s parsley which is all that is left of the herbs he planted – parsley, along with being very tasty – is a very hardy plant.

Middle: A bottomless bucket, containing a little mint plant from my local supermarket. A bit of an experiment; i am not sure if it will survive — so fingers crossed.

Bottom Right: Lettuce, and a mix of peppery salad leaves (– due in 7 days)

Bottom left: Spring onions (– due in the New year)

Middle left: (above the onions) Spinach (–due in 7 days)

Talking of Spinach; we have just planted some fresh spinach on the farm. So to contrast with my little plot, i will show you what we do at work, to sell to the public at markets and in the shops:

This is one of our salad tunnels. You can see the soil already has been prepared, and we are making the beds to plant the salad leaves. The beds have been formed already and we now lay the drip irrigation lines (pipes), on top, and cover with a sheet of biodegradable plastic (which keeps the moisture in the soft raised beds). As you can see the beds are much larger than the little beds i made in my plot, and will hold 3 or 4 rows of spinach plants. Actually they were planted yesterday, this was taken the day before, so now the little spinach plants which are bought from the nursery, are nice and cosy and have been covered with large sheets of white fleece material to keep the warmth and moisture inside. My plot: food for a me – maybe a few others. My boss’s plot: food for a good few hundred – or more.

If my seeds do not germinate, all is not lost – i suppose.

Monday starts with unloading all the weekend market vans, and the yard is full of people sorting boxes of fruit into pallets. My job is to look after the irrigation, so during the summer months, i rarely help out with this Monday morning routine. As my friends lug boxes and forklifts come and go, i start by cleaning the filters on the pumps in the main irrigation shed, making sure all the pumps are working and all the tanks are being filled.

As i fill the main feed tank (liquid ‘organic’ fertilizer gets added to the watering cycle of each crop, the dose, along with time and frequency, is controlled automatically by a computer in the shed) i have time to speak with one of my colleagues who used to farm fruit and veg in his native Portugal. It is very interesting to hear how he would keep his crops irrigated and fortified with feed.

We grow most of our salad crop, and soft fruit in poly-tunnels – Spanish tunnels (all the strawberries and raspberries, and large tunnels more like greenhouses (tomatoes, aubergine, cucumber beans etc…). At the start of the season, we clear and plough the ground in the tunnels, spread manure and compost and plough this in before using a tractor with a different attachment, to make metre wide beds from the now soft rich soil. On top of these beds we lay 16mm pipes, which have small ‘soaker’ holes @ 300mm to 500mm intervals, all are connected to the main water feeder pipes which are directly connected to one of 30 plus valves, and then the pump. After being tested, the pipes – and beds – are covered with a plastic sheet to keep the moisture in. Now the beds are ready for planting.

My friend from Portugal explained how he would plant his produce in open beds with no covering, using an ingenious system of: bedding soil + plant + manure, heaped in beds + another layer of soil to cap/seal the beds in. He said this system helped with watering, instead of the water draining into the ground – which would over the season become compacted, the heaped, and sealed in beds would draw the water up into them – the earth capping retaining the moisture, much as the bedding plastic we use. The resulting beds were better fed with fertilizer, better watered, and better drained; resulting in better/stronger plants. At the start of the season, where the first crops commanded the best prices this method, along with a very early pruning of the resulting ‘early’ stronger growth; would mean the plants would bear fruit up to a month earlier than usual. Changing the dose of liquid fertilizer, and frequency of waterings each day, would also make a big difference to the crop. Most Mondays, especially the mornings, are routine; some days you really do learn something new.