Watering the Strawberries

Cvans

Cvans

Tractorologist
Senior Member
Member
I've been trying to come up with a way to water our strawberries easily and quickly. In Watertown they have flowers planted along the state highway. They have a water truck drives along slowly watering the flowers with a perforated boom. Bingo! So today I built something similar and it works great. Just a 1-1/4" pipe with eleven 1/4" holes drilled in the bottom at 6" intervals. I had the valve and most of the other fittings on hand and along with $20 worth of other materials and it was complete. Took very little effort to apply over 200 gallons of water this afternoon and will do it again this evening. Nice thing is all the water ends up on the plants and no runoff. Drive back and forth so the water can soak in between passes.
The pipe is tipped up when traveling outside the garden.
Watering Strawberries .jpgWatering Strawberries 2.jpg
 
That’s a nice bed of strawberries too how long have you had that bed.
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Roger can correct me here if I'm wrong but I'm thinking 3 years. We planted them at the same time and this will be the first year for a good harvest. My wife is really excited about them. If we don't get hailed on it looks like there is going to be a bumper crop. Sure hope their are sweet.
Don't ask me why I put a space in Strawberries. :rolleyes:
 
I never noticed the space :rolleyes: I wanted to get some out this year but just didn’t have the time. We have a pick your own farm not far from us that we go to each year. I wanted to do a five tier stair step type boxes at the end of the path in our garden. This way I could pull down a cheese cloth over them to keep the birds out. I had one at our old place and it worked out great. Like you I think the best yields we had were the third year. I kept pinching off what few buds we got to promote good plants the following year. It looks your going to get a bountiful harvest out of those.
 
Sawdust said:
I kept pinching off what few buds we got to promote good plants the following year.
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Wife pinched off all our blossoms the first year fir the same reason. I think we purchased something like 50 bare root starts. They came in a Ziplock sandwich bag with no dirt or anything. Really didn't think they would make it. They did and are coming on strong.
Going out now to water them again.
 
Looks like it takes about an hour and a half to put 200 gals of water down with this. So today it was 400 gals. total. That should hold them for a couple of days. It's so nice to not see any water being wasted where it's not needed.
You folks stay cool tomorrow. And Happy Fathers day.
 
Hot and windy here also Chris, I went out this morning and did a little mowing got that done and I'm pretty much done for the day, I was out and watered the flowers and the tomatoes cabbages and broccoli yesterday looks like tomorrow when its a bit cooler I'll be dragging out the water hoses to water the garden unless we get rain this evening
 
Got the watering done and it's getting close to 90. Think I'll spend the rest of the day down in the cool basement working on the well. We have a bored well in the basement with something like an 18" casing. Going to hook that up to the line going out to the back shop which is near the garden and use it to water with. Haven't had a pump in there for years as we had another well right next to the garden. The new pole shed put that out of service.
 
We didn't get our strawberry's covered last fall. Hard winter took its toll. To much to do and to little safe working temps to do it in so the weeds took over the berry beds. Might get them cleaned out that try to save them IF it ever cools off. Pulling weeds in the hot sun is not my favorite thing to be doing.
 
Yeah Roger we had a whole week of extreme heat for our area way too soon with no rain. I wrapped up the corn and potato garden this past Saturday weeding and hilling for the last time. I really like Chris’s watering method.
 
Sawdust said:
Yeah Roger we had a whole week of extreme heat for our area way too soon with no rain. I wrapped up the corn and potato garden this past Saturday weeding and hilling for the last time. I really like Chris’s watering method.
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I gave the whole garden a good watering last Saturday morning. going to check it this morning and see how it is. Chance of rain later today but id it looks like it needs water will do it. To much time and work in it, like olcowhand said, to let it go now.
 
Back about 40 something years ago, several of us started racing go karts on a track built in neighbor's back pasture just inside some trees. Dust was the biggest problem other than busting up our karts, so Mike used an old 275 gallon fuel tank and did just as you did Chris, except he centered the drop pipe in the center on the rear of tank. Sure made racing better as we didn't end up with mud in between our teeth! LOL
 
The promoter at the local NASCAR dirt traqck used a semi trailer with a boom across the back to water the track. The he put a 12' piece of 3" PVC out out the side and with a full tan had decent pressure to water 20' width with each round. Hot windy weather he would water at mid week and Friday nights to get ahead of the hot weather to have a good race track. Would take several thousand gallons.
 
Grass here could use mowing but not going to mow till we get a good rain. Might look a bit shaggy but it is still nice and green and would rather long have & green than trimmed and brown. Garden needs water b ut will see if we get rain this evening. 84° out now with 18 mph west wind so not watering now.
 
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