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Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
This video is all about trickle irrigation systems and why they make sense for food security type gardening that you might do
0:11
This is a very close up view of some trickle irrigation line
0:16
This happens to be made by an Israeli company called Netafim. They actually invented trickle irrigation back in the 60s
0:24
and you can see a little bit of water coming out of one of the emitters here
0:28
I'll be explaining more about that later. But the bottom line is that there is no better way to water more ground with less water than using trickle irrigation systems
0:43
That's the main reason for using them. Another reason is there's a lot less disease pressure when the plants don't get wet all the time
0:52
But lower water requirements, lower pressures and lower volumes are the main
0:58
claim to fame of this stuff. So here you can see one use that we put trickle
1:04
irrigation to and that's a raspberry patch that we have at our place. You can't see it
1:09
but running down the middle of each one of these rows is a trickle irrigation
1:14
line just like the one you saw. It's springtime when this photo was taken. We're in
1:19
the middle of pruning. These are all dead canes here in the grass aisles. But
1:25
that's why you don't see very many leaves on these canes yet. But they're They will leaf out and blossom and set great fruit and we don't need to get any rain all year long
1:37
It can be a complete drought, wall-to-wall drought, and the trickle irrigation is going to deliver
1:42
some wonderful fruit to us. Lots of big, juicy raspberries in this case
1:49
Another name for trickle irrigation is drip irrigation, and that's because it drips out water
1:56
you can see it's a bit fuzzy there's an emitter or rather a hole leading to an
2:01
emitter and then here's a drop of water that's about to fall down there's probably about a drop
2:09
every maybe second or three quarters of a second coming from each one of these holes And in this case there a hole every 18 inches So nice slow water delivery that has a chance to soak in
2:25
and it's just a matter of dripping. And one of the reasons this works is because of what's inside this trickle irrigation line
2:37
which is the emitters. And that's what you can see here. You know, the emitter makes this section of the line bulge a little bit
2:45
And the purpose of the emitter is to equalize the amount of water coming out from each hole
2:53
So you can't see the hole here in this emitter. It's somewhere underneath. But inside the emitter are passages that equalize the flow rate of water regardless of the pressure
3:08
So in this case, with this Netafim trickle irrigation line, the pressure can vary anywhere from 5 PSI up to 60 PSI
3:20
and the amount of water dripping out of the hole will always be consistent
3:24
And that's important because the pressure difference at the beginning of the trickle line compared with the end of the trickle line can be quite extreme
3:32
So the purpose of the emitter is to equalize water output from
3:38
little hole. Now here's one cut open. So there's there's the hole that the water
3:44
comes out of and then this is the emitter that's now no good of course
3:48
because I've sliced it but you can see the passages around the outside of the
3:54
emitter and somehow these equalize flow rate out of the hole regardless of
4:00
pressure and if that wasn't good enough the commercial grade trickle line like
4:05
you see here these emitters are also self-cleaning. So if by some chance a little bit of mud or dirt or sand or
4:13
something gets in here, it will not clog up the emitter. Now I've been using
4:19
this Netafim stuff for 25 years The same batch and it hasn deteriorated at all and there not a single emitter that has stopped working They just constantly keep on dripping So whatever design they using is really working
4:38
Here at our place, at any one given time, we might have a couple of thousand feet of trickle irrigation line working for us
4:46
and we feed water to the various lines with a garden hose
4:51
A three-quarter-inch heavy-duty garden hose does a great job, and we can use it for other purposes too
4:56
So what you see here is the fitting that allows me to connect a garden hose to this run of line
5:05
And I would just thread it in here, tighten it up, turn on the water
5:10
I'll have a valve right here at the end of the hose so I can control it without having to go back to the house and turn on the valve there and it works
5:17
Now, when I remove the garden hose, I don't want all kinds of bugs and critters and spiders to make their nests in here
5:26
for dirt to get in unnecessarily. I mean, the self-cleaning emitters are one thing
5:31
but I'm not going to push my luck too much. So that's why I have an outfit like this made up
5:36
So this is a male hose thread fitting on this end, fits into the female one that's on the main line
5:44
and there's a short chunk of trickle irrigation line, and then a figure-eight end-closing fitting
5:52
which holds the line in a folded position to block off this end
5:56
Whenever I take out the garden hose, I'll just thread this in, and I know my trickle line is sealed
6:03
and I don't have to worry about any nasty stuff getting inside
6:08
Now, the opposite end of each line, the end opposite to where I'm connecting some sort of water feed
6:16
has to be blocked off, of course, and there are different fittings that allow that
6:19
but the best by far that I've ever used is this figure 8 closer
6:24
It's very simple. it never pops off, works every single time and it's inexpensive too. It's just a piece of
6:32
plastic where the line comes in one side, you fold it over and then the line goes out
6:38
the other side Holds this fold it actually stops the water really well from flowing out and you know there no better alternative in my experience than that Now one other thing to do with trickle irrigation I mentioned before
6:56
you get the most watering from a given volume of water using this method. But there's another really
7:03
big bonus, especially when you're designing a survival food system. And that's the shortage of
7:11
energy that's probably going to exist when the food system collapses. And when it comes to trickle irrigation, you need far lower pressures than with, say, sprinkler
7:26
irrigation, and you need far lower flow rates. And you'll get the most out of your system if you install a water timer, something like this
7:37
So this timer will allow water flow for a certain runtime, like you can see here, three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes, whatever
7:48
And then it will allow you to set the frequency as well
7:53
So every hour for three minutes, you know, every second hour for 15 minutes, whatever you want
8:01
Now, the advantage here extends to more than you might think. We have at our peak irrigated maybe half an acre of ground, and we've done that from a well that flows less than two gallons a minute
8:19
I mean, that's not very much. And there's no way whatever power sprinkler system, we can't even keep one regular lawn sprinkler going for more than half an hour in the summertime before our well will run dry
8:32
That said, we can irrigate, as I said, half an acre of ground with trickle irrigation line
8:41
just using our regular household pump. So it's very efficient, it's very long-lasting
8:47
If you live in a place where you need to grow food and the weather doesn't always cooperate
8:52
and you get some droughts sometime, then trickle irrigation, and especially with a water timer
8:57
like this, is definitely the way to go. I've never seen anything that even comes close to it
9:02
Thank you
#Gardening & Landscaping