OLATHE FARMERS ADOPT ENVIRONMENTALLY SAFE PRACTICES

Farmers in our locality are becoming more receptive to environmentally safe practices. They are adopting irrigation water management practices to reduce salt loading of the return flow. This water that gets into the ditches or river is being used by other farmers. Deterioration of water quality affects everybody - we all live downstream.

This summer, John Harold, of Olathe Sweet Corn, established a demonstration on the use of surge irrigation and fertigation using the surge valve. The system was set up in his broccoli field at Hoover Corner four miles west of Olathe.

John is a conscientious farmer who wants to cut down on the excessive use of nitrogen to avoid pollution. Both broccoli and sweet corn are heavy users of nitrogen. Fertigation using surge valve provides him the opportunity to spoon feed his crop. It enables him to apply the fertilizer uniformly in split applications for higher uptake by the plants without the added cost of machinery use. Moreover, it is not possible to use the machinery at later growth stages, requiring one time high dose application susceptible to loss.

Surge irrigation and fertigation is gaining popularity everyday. A properly managed system enables the user to cut down runoff and deep percolation to the minimum. This method of irrigation allows quicker advance and achieve uniform depth of application across the furrow. Consequently, the irrigation application efficiency is higher when compared to conventional continuous furrow irrigation. One of the biggest possible benefit to be reaped from the surge system is fertigation.

If you own a surge system, then you should definitely consider fertigation. David Seymour, another Olathe farmer, has been doing so ever since he started to use surge valves (1987). As a matter of fact, he put the idea to our field researchers. This ultimately led to the production of the Service in Action sheet #.508. You may obtain a copy from any one of the CSU Cooperative Extension offices nearest to you.

Reprinted from Waterline, Colorado State University Cooperative Extension Service