We wanted to give a huge thanks to Chris and Phil from Warner’s who donated time and materials to our drip line system and upgrades.  This project had a lot of moving parts and a lot of help from the community.  Chris, our grant writing intern, helped us secure the Grower Grant through Flagstaff Foodlink for materials for our drip line irrigation system; thanks Foodlink! Chaz, another intern, researched and designed the irrigation system and then collaborated with Chris Whitney from Warner’s to fine tune his designs.  We had eight volunteers who came out to learn about drip lines and helped us install the system. Currently we are fine tuning the lines and the system. Normally, purple line is used for non-potable water, but we are using it here with water from our rain barrel and underground well.

This gives us a huge advantage in understanding our irrigation needs and water use.  The line installed is from Rainbird and has pressurized emitters every twelve inches that release 0.9 gallons of water per minute.  We can calculate the number of emitters and figure out how much water will saturate the soil and then double check our water meter to see that the lines are emitting the same amount.  If we see discrepancies, we can check for damaged lines/emitters or leaks in the system.  We can also cross-reference the amount of water and soil moisture with the variety of plant, temperatures, and the amount of wind to fine tune the length of time we irrigate so don’t over or under irrigate the beds, one of the problems we had last year which damaged a good amount of our kale.

Thanks again for everyone’s help in this project.

Chaz (intern) in green, working with Chris (Warner’s) on calculations and other volunteers setting up lines.

Chris cutting the lines.

Chaz checking the lines.