Excess moisture at the end of the growing season leads to premature cracking of the head. Therefore, the late cabbage, laid for storage, is stopped to water a month before harvesting.
On large plots, watering can be done in several ways. In the past, furrow irrigation was mainly used. Then the sprinkling method was widely used. And not so long ago - drip irrigation.
Read about automatic and drip irrigation in articles
Irrigation systems from the company "Volia"
Do-it-yourself automatic watering of the site
Simple irrigation system for the site
With different methods of irrigation, the contours of soil moisture differ sharply (see Fig.).
 |
| Diagram of the contours of soil moisture at an irrigation rate of 2.0-2.5m3 / 100m2 (oblique shading) and 3.5-4.0m3 / 100m2 (horizontal shading): a - for furrow irrigation, b - sprinkler irrigation, c - drip irrigation (4) |
Furrow irrigation - the easiest way. But it also has disadvantages: there must be an even soil relief, it is impossible to ensure uniform soil moisture throughout the furrow, and on sandy and sandy loam soils, such watering is completely impossible. It is also very difficult to provide water to the area of plant roots in the initial period of their growth.
Sprinkling method - more advanced than furrow irrigation. Here it is possible to irrigate in difficult terrain, regulate the irrigation rate and apply small irrigation rates, water on sandy loam and sandy soils, carry out refreshing watering in hot weather, increase air humidity and protect plants from frost.
But this method also has disadvantages. These are energy intensity, uneven distribution of rain in windy weather, the formation of a soil crust after irrigation or surface runoff on dense soils.
In small areas (garden, summer cottages, small subsidiary farms), you can use pulsating-type installations or oscillating (swinging in an arc) for sprinkling irrigation. They require pressures up to 4 atm. (bar) and, accordingly, the pump and the container with water. On some models, there is a manual adjustment of the flow rate and irrigation radius. It is also possible to regulate with a ball valve on a common line. One must be careful when using pumping stations, since they have restrictions on the number of starts per unit of time. If you severely limit the water flow with a tap located after the station, then an automatic shutdown may occur due to its overload. The characteristic must indicate the minimum permissible amount of water l / min at which the station operates in normal mode. One sprinkler can cover an area of up to 400 m2, depending on the model. For some models, a special tripod stand is offered for operating the unit above the ground (approximately 50 cm), which increases the quality and area of irrigation.
With drip irrigation water is not supplied to the entire irrigated area, but only to the rows of plants.
Water supply can be carried out either through drip hoses or through individual droppers with and without adjustment. There is a design of hoses with a microporous surface through which water seeps in in the form of drops and the hose "sweats", as it were. The drip hoses are thin-walled plastic tubing with a diameter of about 16 mm (can be up to 22 mm) with drippers built into the surface (integrated), with or without pressure compensation design, with flushing from blockages.Drippers can also have different flow rates through the outlet, and here the range starts from fractions of a liter per hour to several tens of liters.
This method can be applied even more widely: in difficult terrain and steep slopes, on quicksands (sandy or sandy loam soils saturated with water can sometimes liquefy under mechanical stress), in areas with strong winds. With this method of irrigation, water is significantly saved, 1.5-2.0 times compared to the method of sprinkling. The row spacing remains dry and does not interfere with the work.
The disadvantages include: cost and rather stringent requirements for the preparation of irrigation water. Here, the cost price has an inverse relationship: the larger the irrigated area, the lower the cost of the system per unit area.
The length and width of the site may not be uniform and therefore the drip hoses of some models can reach several hundred meters (up to a kilometer) in length per irrigation line, which has a positive effect on the cost of the entire system.
Drip hoses are produced in large coils on reels up to 3 km long, and since their wall thickness varies from 0.13 to 1.13 mm, the tube turns out to be flat for a longer winding length. Under water pressure, the tube straightens out and becomes round. During the production process, the droppers themselves are mounted in the hose and, depending on where they will be used, on what crop, the distance between the droppers changes, and here the range is from 15 cm to 1.5 m.The maximum working pressure in the lines can reach 3 atm. The minimum pressure on some models of drip hoses is 0.2 atm, i.e. they can be powered from a container with water raised 1.5-2 m from the ground (pump is excluded).
With drip irrigation, irrigation should be carried out alternately in small and large doses, in order to avoid drying out the lower layers of the soil.
If the droppers have a calibrated flow rate, then the amount of irrigation dose is regulated by the operating time of the installation. With adjustable droppers, the flow rate can be adjusted individually. Usually, drip hoses are used more in open ground, and individual drippers are more popular in protected ground (greenhouses), although drip hoses are sometimes used there too.
Drip irrigation equipment, mainly of modular type. This is a block of filters for preliminary water purification, a solution unit with tanks for mixing the necessary feed components, a total container for the finished solution, valves for supplying solution to a specific place and a pump. The solution unit contains a control computer, which is responsible for the correct preparation of the nutrient solution and the timing of its delivery to the plants.
When using drip irrigation in the open field, the important point is water, or rather its quality, because water can be taken from open reservoirs. For proper preparation, multistage filtration of water from mechanical impurities is used, the addition of nutrients to it and supply to the desired area. Filters are mainly used of sand and gravel type with a large processing surface. A new direction is mesh and disc filters with automatic flushing, which are more economical and efficient in operation when taking water from open reservoirs with a low and medium content of mechanical and organic suspensions. The total service life of filter systems can be up to 20 years.
The difference between individual droppers and drip hoses is that each plant is supplied with one dropper (if necessary, two droppers), mounted on a peg. The droppers are fed from a main hose with a diameter of 13-15 mm and, through a lowering fitting, are connected to a capillary hose with a diameter of 4-5 mm. There are dropper designs that are installed directly on the line through a hole in the wall. Individual unregulated droppers have different water flow rates from 1 l / h to 8 or more.The adjustable droppers range from 0 to 20 l / h.
For summer residents, the very principle of drip irrigation is especially convenient when gardeners come to plots only on weekends. If, leaving the site for the city, summer residents de-energize their house, the irrigation system in this case can be used autonomous (without a pump). The main task is to set up the automation of the solution or water supply. There are battery operated controllers on the market that allow you to use them without being connected to electricity.
When using mineral fertilizers as top dressing, you can pick up completely soluble mixtures or extracts. For a small farm, it is not at all necessary to buy an expensive mortar unit. Instead, you can purchase a fertilizer meter, which is also built into the system, which is much cheaper.
Many gardeners are accustomed to using their own fertilizers for fertilizing - based on manure, organic extracts, herbal infusions, etc. All this contains mechanical impurities. In this case, the feeding process itself is carried out in two stages - first, you water the soil near the plant with the help of droppers, and then feed it manually, but it must be borne in mind that this method is only suitable for small areas. This is where the mortar unit and fertilizer dispenser won't come in handy.
High yields can be achieved by using different irrigation methods and their combinations. The most important thing is to ensure at the same time the optimal level of moisture, both in the root layer of the soil and the surface layer of air around the plants.
Literature 1. "Hybrids of white cabbage F1 Fast and Furious and F1 Nakhalenok as a means of obtaining high profits" // Bulletin of the vegetable grower. 2011. No. 5. S. 21-23. 2. Cabbage. // Book series "Household farming". M. "Rural nov", 1998. 3. V.A. Borisov, A.V. Romanova, I.I. Virchenko "Storage of white cabbage of various ripening periods" // Vestnik Ovoshchevoda. 2011. No. 5. S. 36-38. 4. S.S. Vaneyan, A.M. Smaller, D.I. Engalychev "Methods and technique of irrigation in vegetable growing" // Vestnik Ovoshchevoda. 2011. No. 3. S. 19-24.
