Drip Irrigation question

Nao57

Loving the herd life
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So I wondered if any of you have experimented with the idea of cycling a drip irrigation set up for orchard trees, etc to maybe have 1 week of good flow, and then 1 week almost nothing, and then back and forth. How well and what is the ideal setting between trying to keep them alive and going, but also trying encourage root strength?

The hypothesis is I would like to see if you can force the roots to keep going as deep as you could, to make the tree stronger. (For years people have pointed out how when trees have more adversity and the water isn't cheap that they will go deeper, while easy always fed trees will not put the roots as deep.) But its also true that you do need moisture for some growth and to get fruit.

So this is why I wonder if you can try to get a bit of both by cycling from one watering setting to another?

But I also wonder what the ideal setting would be? It might not be on weeks, but...what would you suggest the ideal setting to be? Plus, consideration of the ideal setting would also have to consider how much you can reduce the watering settings without disturbing fruit production? (What do you think of this also?)

In theory, you could keep cycling an endurance encouragement setup , and over time try to get it to have the trees be as stable as possible, and get to a point with the optimum minimal human interaction necessary; with this being the goal.

Its true that each fruit tree species would have differences in this.

Some observations for this...

We have a few fruit trees in the back that are mature. One of them was there already when I was a kid (plum tree). We never really watered it, so it grew on its own and doesn't need any human encouragement.

A few others have become stable. But one of them needs human interaction to survive because its got one side by the drive way and another side by the back porch, also cement. This means its got 2 sides with no moisture feeding (natural) (apple tree). But one of the other apple trees that's stable doesn't need any moisture encouragement to do well, but when it does have concentrated moisture feeding really has a huge different in crop results.

Anyway this is all interesting and fun to think about.

Especially now, people can see that they need to be self sufficient and its unknown if they can rely on companies or the government, just because of so much bad going on. (Speaking honestly without taking sides, and not being angry or upset at any one.) I just don't think you can rely on others at this time, except yourself, God, and sometimes some of your family.
 
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