I'm more than a hour north of you.
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fertilizer Drip Irrigation Fertilizer Injection
- Thread starter NorTexChiliJs
- Start date
I'm more than a hour north of you.
Oh really? Where?
When do you guys put your plants outside up there?
Mine don’t go in the ground until after the 2[sup]ND[/sup] Saturday in June. They have been under a large white maple tree for the past 3 weeks. If you want any bounty up here you better bring nothing less than your “A” game. The growing season ends for us September/October.
I'm already harvesting jalapeños.
Wow, no margin for error there! So do you start your seedlings indoors in Feb, then get them out a foot high and push 'em right into making peppers?
I ask because I might be living in northern new england next year. Thanks!
You got it!!
Once I pot-up my grow plugs I use this biweekly:
PHC Seedling & Houseplants NPK 6-12-6 Biofertilizer
Contains potassium nitrate, ammonium phosphate, urea, seaweed extract, potassium phosphates, copper sulfate, manganese, iron, zinc, amino acids, K and B-complex vitamins, beneficial bacteria, humates and humic acids, kelp, citric and citrate buffers and yucca plant extract
2.5 oz. of easy-to-use powder makes 6 gallons of powerful fertilizer; 8 oz. makes 19 gallons
http://www.gardeners.com/Seedling-Fertilizer/11727,default,pd.html
Now most of them are 18" to 24" tall and will be going in the ground next weekend. I'm already picking pods off from them so they'll grow much larger. Bigger plants grow more pods.
Wow, this is remarkably similar to the nutes I've been producing for about a year. Even the citrate buffer.
What solution did you go with? Very curious as I plan to switch over to all pots next year.
Hey Woody,
I have basically decided that i overthought and underplanned the irrigation system. Last year I installed a PVC header that was connected to 9 beds. Each bed had a soaker hose. By the end of the year, almost every soaker hose had a hole in it and would not soak evenly. This year I decided to use that same header with dripline. I wish I had an aerial view of the garden to show how I linked the beds together, but don't. On the north side of the garden I have 9 beds runnung north to south. The southern half of the garden has some beds going north to south and some going east to west. I linked the north beds to the south beds the best I could.
The main problem I am having is finding a fertigation unit that will accomodate about 850 gph just for the main garden, and then around 100 gph for the other areas of the garden without drastically changing the injection rate. I believe the dosatron will work if I kept it the same as it is now, but I'm cheap and believe there has to be a less expensive alternative.
I have been lucky with the rain this year. I was able to topdress with bagged fertilizer and only had to hand water a couple of times. The rain did the rest for me.
I think I will hold off on the fertigation injector for this year. I have decided I need to split the garden into sections that are more equal on the emitter count.
I am actually leaning towards the Ez-Flo brand of fertigation units. As AJ mentioned, the Ez units will allow liquid fertilizers. However, I need to find a unit with a pretty large tank.
I am looking for something that would allow me to mix roughly 1/4 cup of homebrew compost tea per gallon of water. I would need a 25 gallon tank of compost tea to run 800 emitters for one hour. I usually water for about 2 hours.
The EZ-FLO HI-FLO unit is what I am looking into. I haven't found a price on it yet.
There is an 86gallon version of this which sounds pretty good to me.
I will be totally re-designing the layout of the garden for next year, so this may not be what I go with. For now, it looks like what I want.