Hello from Indiana

[Rio_Grande]

Hello everyone. Thanks for being here. I am a 39 year old kid that grew up on a mini farm. We grew cattle, veggies horses, rabbits chickens and goats. I was away for about 15 years but most recently my parents asked me to take the reigns and return the farm to a productive money making operation. I have the hay program and the livestock paying for themselves again and if we stay on track will be profitable this year.

Here is the gardening part. Last year we invested in a trial run to see if we could make it in produce. Amazingly we did very well. This success has led us to offer a very limited number of CSA shares this year. I didn't want to go over our head and get a bad reputation. We are honest people and want to bee revealed as such. With the new responsibility to our investors, that is how I see them, comes all types of issues. We are raising beds laying drip line and plastic mulch in an effort to improve the product and reduce the backbreaking work of weeding. I am almost done with the layer with little time to spare and following up with building a water wheel planter. The first round of cold season crops are in confined raised beds and we are starting the second planting tomorrow.

Sorry for the book. Lots to shoulder. My parents are not in good health but this is what they want. This is what they will get.

I am looking for all info I can find especially on the topics of drip irrigation and fertigation.

Thanks, by the way I am Jeff

 

[lynpenny]

Hey Jeff sounds like you have tons to do. I don't do drip but probably should but my fertilization program is based on my use of compost that I make in the back yard. I am trying not to use chemical fertilizer but I have very limited amount of dirt to play with. Glad to see you found our board. Welcome

 

[Randy]

I have never seen the word 'fertigation' before, but it brings to mind what I have seen in the corn fields here in Oregon where they use these huge Rainbird type sprinklers for fertilizer application. I have three farmer friends and one of them plants a large garden and sells produce on a U-Pick basis. Most of his customers come to pick cherries, blueberries, and a few other fruits. He doesn't use drip irrigation though. What I have seen were Rainbird sprinklers. We don't have the high humidity issue here though so we can get away with top watering without too much concern for fungus. This particular farmer has about 2000 blueberry plants.

 

[GrowLightGuy]

What kind of square footage are you looking to irrigate? Some inexpensive waterfall pumps can push out some serious GPH these days. You can try mrdrip.com for tuns of ideas also.