No, I am not losing it. Of course you won’t be irrigating crops this winter. But the planning you do this winter will have you ready to go when it is time to irrigate in the 2016 crop year, and will dramatically enhance your irrigation efforts when time is more critical at the start of the irrigation season.

Pipe Planner, Delta Plastic’s web-based, updated version of the NRCS PHAUCET program, is a tool that is designed to allow the creation of the most efficient furrow irrigation setup for row crops. It applies user-supplied information to provide a design that maximizes uniform irrigation water application on fields of varying sizes, shapes, and row lengths, and to prevent pipe blowout. The end result will be that individual fields will be irrigated uniformly, thus reducing water loss from the end of furrows. You are encouraged to use this tool to conserve water when furrow irrigating fields of varying sizes.

A video on this website gives detailed instructions on how to use this furrow irrigation tool.  If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to collect the data/information you will need to use Pipe Planner. This includes output or discharge rate in gallons per minute from the well or riser, furrow spacing and direction, elevation change along the length of the polytube set, and length of the irrigation set. Once these data have been collected and entered, they will be used by Pipe Planner to make the necessary calculations.

The information you input is used by Pipe Planner to calculate the optimum polytube size, the sizes and number of holes to punch in each section of a line of polytubing, and the approximate time required to irrigate a field from that irrigation set. So if you have already collected the above data/information, then all you will have to do when it is time to irrigate next year is roll out the pipe and punch the holes as directed by Pipe Planner. This will drastically reduce the time required to get irrigation started when it is time.

Producers are encouraged to view all the modules in the Pipe Planner video so they will become familiar with the necessary information to collect and input, and how to use that information to develop the most efficient plans that can be stored and changed when needed for furrow-irrigated fields.

Composed by Larry G. Heatherly, Nov. 2015, larryheatherly@bellsouth.net