Are you having problems in your garden because you don’t know how to manage automatic irrigation? Would you like to optimize the water in your garden to the maximum? We will tell you about the exudative irrigation method that if you did not know it, it will completely change the way you live your garden.

DISCOVER THE ADVANTAGES OF EXUDING WATERING IN YOUR GARDEN

We are talking about  exudative irrigation, a system to get the most out of your garden.

It is true that for the irrigation of small gardens , a “hose” every so often can be worth it and will give us good results, but … Have you thought about the water footprint caused by growing your vegetables? This is like everything, a garden does not spend, 10 very little and 100 something, but in the end we have a significant expenditure of water that could be optimized in a very simple way and making your life much easier. I explain:

There is a time when every small farmer wants to put a dripper system for his garden and thus forget to a certain extent about the irrigation of it.

So we take the step, we set up our irrigation system , we put the appropriate drippers for the crop and we start in the fantastic world of not having to be present every time we water.

Once we finish the cycle of the crop we had, we proudly reap the fruit of our dedication to the garden and obviously we will want to continue our rotation and plant the next crop that touches.

Problem!

The drippers that we once clicked (for the planting frame of the previous crop) are now out of square with the new crop!

This is an inconvenience that in the end remains when we leave the droppers and think: “The water will reach the plants.” Yes, that is true to some extent but,

Have you considered that you may be losing a very important amount of water on the other hand?

The solution:  exudative irrigation .

In Gardenprue we have mentioned it in the post dedicated to the cultivation method of Gaspar Caballero , Las Parades en Crestall, since he recommends this type of irrigation in his method. Today we want to detail the benefits of this irrigation system perhaps unknown to you.

OPERATION OF EXUDATIVE IRRIGATION

The rationale for exudative irrigation is simple. A porous tube in all its points that literally exudes water from all of them providing a continuous and uniform flow throughout the growing area. They are made of various materials such as polyethylene, rubber or textile. The latter is the most used. It consists of a polyester textile tube coated with a porous resin.

When a soil is dry and the tube contains water with a minimum pressure (from 0.2 bar), the soil-exudating tube assembly is subjected to the negative hydraulic force that causes a natural movement of the water from the tube to the ground through the forces of gravity and capillarity.

In this way the water is distributed in all directions (also upwards) causing the wet front to surround the tube.

Depending on the pressure and the structure of the soil (content in silts, clays and sands), we will have a soil-plant system that will regulate itself depending on the amount of evapotranspired water. This is achieved with continuous irrigation.

ADVANTAGES OF THE EXUDATIVE IRRIGATION SYSTEM

• Saving water compared to any other irrigation system, even the one located by drip.
• Optimal plant growth conditions achieving very good yields since we provide the plant with the necessary humidity for its development.
• Uniformity in the distribution of water in the growing area causing greater efficiency and better performance in the crop.
• On sloping land it is a very suitable system since the distribution of water through capillary forces largely prevents the displacement of water by gravity in favor of the slope. Maximum 3%. For more slope follow the contour lines.
• Operation with minimum pressure (0.2 bar), being able to perform gravity irrigation without the need for running water or pumps.
• In places with excess lime in the water we will not have problems for a long time.
• There are no dripper relocation problems when changing planting frames in crop rotations.

OTHER ADVANTAGES OF EXUDATIVE IRRIGATION

Also if the tube is buried we will get additional advantages:

• Better efficiency, if possible, since we lose even less water through evaporation. Losses are almost nil.
• The orchard is better from the aesthetic point of view since the tube is not seen unlike the droppers. Be careful when doing work on the ground so as not to break it.
• Greater durability. The deterioration by solar radiation is almost nil so we will have exudative irrigation for a while.
• Buried at the appropriate depth, we will be providing the water exactly in the root zone of the plant.