Building up the irrigation system

Over last 2 weeks we have been busy building up a drip irrigation system to make watering all our plants so much easier. The well is working fine and water seems strong - the pressure is a strong 60 Psi, but after about 30 minutes the volume does seem to drop a bit, but keeps going beyond an hour which is the longest I have run it continuously.

The main irrigation spine going down the main back row is 1" PVC - from that we have 4 separate 3/4 " PVC pipes that we have buried to feed the circles, these in turn feed 3/8" black poly pipe onto which we have put the 2 gallon per hour pressure compensated (cleanable) drippers from Irrigation Direct. The side pipes are joined with couplers and the spine is also joined with couplers in 4 places so that we can remove this main feed at end of season.



Each hop crown has its own blue dripper , the poly pipe is then anchored in place using 12" wire hooks pushed into the soil. Each circle has between 20 and 24 hops plants, and the 128ft back row has them spaced 3 ft apart.... right now we are tilling up a back back row , an additional row on the same wires spaced 3 ft behind the main row. This will add space for our extra Goldings and Chinooks.


The drippers seem to work very well on the well water so far without supplimental pressure , but will monitor once fully installed within next few days.

The main valve will be on a timer with two settings per day allowing about 3 gallons per bine

3rd Hops Farm workday

A Great day out on the Farm...plenty to do.




During the week Barry helped me get the core of the watering and Irrigation system laid down, and this last weekend the co-op members turned out in force and we prepared the remainder of the beds, trained bines, thinned out the rapidly growing hops weeded and also raised the last pole on the end of back row (finally). This was an interesting task as the arm on the backhoe has a problem with lateral movement (the control has a suspected broken spring) - and wont work , but even worse wont hold it's position and swings left and right on its own.



So backing the tractor and moving the arm was needed to position the pole, but after a few tries we got it done.


Lots of advice from the sidelines ...

I also worked on the well again during last week - repairing freeze damage to a small section of pipe in front of the one way valve- obviously water collected and then froze and expanded, I replaced it with a section of 1" galvanized pipe


Mark taking a rest.

It was a wonderful warm but cloudy day on Sunday - ideal for working outside , as it followed an 81deg day Saturday and would have been too hot to be working outside all day, so the cloud cover was wonderful , later in the evening we had 1/2 " of rain which was just perfect for the hops.

WE also created more metal stakes and continued with roping off the back row until we ran out of the old rope - new rope due in tomorrow.



Also expected this week are all the irrigation drippers so that we can test the irrigation system. I chose flag drippers - 2gph and these can be dismantled for cleaning too.

Lastly we also worked over some expanded areas (extra 3 feet width) behind the Goldings and the Chinooks , so that we can plant a second row - at least the beginning of one - for the extra rhizomes we have.

Talking of extra rhizomes, cleaning up the Mt Hood I found three plants that had thrown rhizomes up to 2 ft from the crown , so cut them off and created another 5 plants - all of which are growing. I also cut two Centenniels and planted them too.

Last interesting thing we noticed is that amongst the Nugget, we have two plants that are obviously different, growth pattern is diff as well as shape of leaves, so we will monitor these and have marked them as well. Watching the emergenmce of new shoots of all the hops has been interesting as each variety has been different, either by time they came out, or color of shoots and by growth pattern. Leaves are subtely different too.

2nd Work day - April 5

Well two weeks of almost permanent rain (over 3"), have brought tremendous growth and advancement to the hops.



The Nuggets, the Cascades and Centennials are all 18" to 24" tall. The newly mulched centers have new weeds to.



Once again we had a good turn out of the members and three pardons and later on email found another pardon, which means 14 of the 16 Guys either turned out to work or excused themselves today - excellent job.



We had lots to do, we had to make wire rings and find all the old stakes, which in many cases were below ground, I found that using the rake helped us a lot as the metal on metal ring located them easily even when buried. Grass was cut and edges weedeated , as well as all the surrounding areas. We also rolled out the beginnings of the irrigation system, with the 3/8 piping rolled around the circles.



Jason and I sorted out the first circle (Nugget) before lunch and when all the rest arrived we climbed in and resolved most of the rest

We also planted the 5x Chinooks from the Greenhouse, so we now have 8 in the ground with rain expected tomorrow.



A good days work