Sprinkler irrigation is a standard practice in Southeastern Idaho. You can see large pivots or wheel lines making their way across a field spraying water that cascades into rainbows as it hits the ground. And irrigation likes this makes sense for the crops it’s used for; such as wheat, corn, potatoes, and barley.
However, when you grow specialized crops such as raspberries, pumpkins, sweet corn, and cut flowers, this approach just doesn’t make sense and here’s why.
Fruits such as raspberries, strawberries and blackberries have thin skins. This makes them easily susceptible to disease, especially when the fruit gets wet. If the leaves and stems also get excessively wet it can cause serious disease issues with you plant as a whole. Definitely not something we want.
The same goes for flowers. When large droplets of water hit the delicate petals of blossoms, such as we can experience in a thunderstorm, it can defoliate the flower entirely, leaving you with only the green stems. Not a great look in a bouquet.
This is one of the reasons we choose to use drip irrigation on our farm. It allows us to deliver water directly to the roots of our tender plants, allowing them to get the hydration they need, where they need it. It also minimizes damage to the fruit or flowers we sell through mold, or disease.
Another reason we use drip irrigation is to mitigate the number of weeds we have to pull. If we only water the parts of our ground where the plants we do want to grow live, it makes weeding much more manageable. Instead of weeding the entire plot, we only have to take care of what grows in the row, leaving us with more time to care for the rest of our farm.
The final reason we used drip is for water conservation. Like I’ve mentioned above, we aren’t watering what we don’t want to grow and therefore need a fraction of the water to do it. It also can prevent us from overwatering our plants because the flow rate is so low.
This type of irrigation has worked well on our small farm for several years and is one we will continue to use. It’s cost effective and reduces the labor on our farm immensely. Plus, it ensures there’s plenty of berries for you when you visit our farm in the fall.
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