Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The drip irrigation tubing is secured to the bottom wire of the trellis system. Each
vine has one dripper or emitter located above the root zone. Careful water man-
agement ensures that your vines do not get too much nor too little water at crit-
ical times such as fruit set.
The method of water management that I recommend is the water budget method,
which is based on replacing the amount of water lost from evapotranspiration. However,
you never allow the entire water reservoir in the soil to be lost. Because adverse plant stress
in vines occurs after 50 to 60 percent of the soil water reservoir is lost, you replace the wa-
ter budget in the root zone when water reaches the 50 percent moisture level.
Unless you have a lot of experience with managing an irrigation system, you may
want to get a soil tensiometer to help you evaluate how much moisture is in the soil. If the
soil is too dry, tension increases. If soil is too wet, its tension is low. Models are relatively
inexpensive and have probes that go from a few inches into the ground to more than 3 feet
in depth.
