I'm Niel Allen, Extension Irrigation Specialist for Utah State University.
We're on a farm near Bear River City,
where they're drip irrigating onions.
We're at the pump station. And so with the drip system, we have...
it requires a pump, a filtration system, and also provides an opportunity for a
chemical injection system for fertilizers and other chemicals that can be used for
the production of onions and for the maintenance of the drip irrigation system.
So we have some tanks here, some large, some small.
It can be injected in with the irrigation system and then applied
uniformly throughout the field.
These are sand fielders here, that take
all of the sediments and the fine
material out of the water so that the
emitters will not plug from trash in the water.
Then also another important component
of a drip system is a controller that
would shut banks of drip tubing on and off with valves.
They have a flow meter here, a backflow
prevention, and all the components that
they need at the drip system primary station.
Then from here it travels in main lines
to the fields and then once it gets to
the fields, they run manifolds on top of
the ground and into the drip line.
We'll see each of those as we move to
other parts of the field.
Well, about [inaudible].
Right now, we're at the end of the field and this is the drip tape.
They bring it up out of the ground,
it's buried about three inches in the
ground as you move in to the row.
They bring it up, they have a little flush valve on the end.
That provides an opportunity to flush the
sediments out of the drip tape.
You'll also notice that the drip tape emitters are on top.
That would prevent sediments from plugging an emitter.
These beds are 39, 40 inches and there's one drip tape per bed and for four
rows of onions on that bed.
So the water will leave the drip tape
and gravity pulls it down, capillary
action pulls it to the side and it subs into the bed.
This is just one end and we'll look also
at the center where they're connected to the manifold.
Yeah, it's pretty wet out in the field this morning.
We're here in Bear River City, right
after one and a half inches of rain that occurred two days ago.
So the irrigation system is not running
this morning, but ideally the nice thing
about drip irrigation is that it allows
us to do much of our field work at the
same time that we're irrigating.
That's nearly impossible with a furrow based system.
Because the water is distributed just
in the center of the onion bed,
we can actually walk through the field,
we can drive equipment in the field,
we can spray insecticides, spray
herbicides, all at the same time that we're irrigating.
That's one of the real positive benefits
to running this drip irrigation systems.
It also means that we can really carefully
monitor and meter the nutrients that
are needed to the plant, so that we create
this nice uniform environment, which creates uniform plant growth.
At the end of the year when we harvest,
one would expect much, much more
uniformity in terms of bulb sizes, as a
result of better and more controlled water
management within the onion field.
Behind me here, we have probably the
most uniform field of onions that is being
grown in the state this year.
Much of it has to do with irrigation.
We're at the main line that feeds the
water out into the onion field.
You can see with the lay flat that
inserted in it are access tubes that
feed into each of the drip lines.
The drip lines then progress down each field.
Then the grower with the sand filter
system will, and the clean water that's
coming out into the field, will ensure
that the irrigation is provided to the
onions as needed based on their stage of growth.
One of the nice things about these
systems is that we can eject much of the
fertilizer that we need through the drip
line and get it right to where we need it.
We can essentially spoon feed these
plants to the point where we create this
nice uniform environment for plant
growth and development.
The drip tape is buried deep enough so
that we can go do field operations, like
early season planting, cultivations, and such, so that it's not
being damaged by that equipment.
Then as we progress later in the year,
toward maturity, the rod weeder that will
lift the onions will go underneath that
tape, which will allow it to be loosened,
so that it can be extracted, as they prepare for the harvest period.