Ideas to add liquid fertilizer to irrigation

blueriver · Jul 25, 2012

I have the water reel for irrigation and am thinking of implementing an idea to apply liquid nitrogen. Here's my plan so far ... I have a 300 gallon plastic tote to carry the fertilize from the coop to home ... I think I can tap into the brass discharge side of the pto pump ... have the tank on a stand with a hose bibb and run from that to the tapped in brass fitting allowing the suction to pull the liquid fertilize.

Of course I will have to mark the tank, use the hose bib to control the flow of the fertilize, mark off an acre take my best quess on a setting and then watch the tank lower itself from suction to adjust the flow with the hose bibb to get the needed amount of fertilizer per acre.

What you think about this ...

bcp · Jul 25, 2012

This may be what you need:

Drip Irrigation fertilizer injectors, RobertMarvel.com selling the highest quality drip irrigation tape and accessories

Bruce

blueriver · Jul 25, 2012

Your excatly right ... thats the idea. I have a 3" hard suction line and the discharge is 2.5" .. I pump about 110 gallons a minute. I think those are designed for drip irrigation and inline. I think if I tap a half inch brass barbed fitting and use a clear hose from the tank to the fitting I have plenty of suction created to pull the fertilize from an elevated tank.

Localmotion · Jul 25, 2012

We use to use one of these for adding drugs to the drinking water in chicken houses, and also for adding chemical to our vehicle sprayer during the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001: Dosatron Water-Powered Non-Electric Chemical Injectors

Guess it would also work fine with liquid nitrogen. As I remember the units are quite cheap - think we paid around £150 for ours (albeit 10 years ago).

bcp · Jul 25, 2012

blueriver said:
Your excatly right ... thats the idea. I have a 3" hard suction line and the discharge is 2.5" .. I pump about 110 gallons a minute. I think those are designed for drip irrigation and inline.

They are for drip irrigation, but for fields, not gardens, so there is a large flow. The pipe sizes listed go up to 3 inch.

Bruce

Rio_Grande · Jul 25, 2012

We run a pto pump and push water with nutrient mix. I mix it in the tank which ensures a properly measured amount of nutrient. I never liked the suction setups because if the re is no way to KNOW how much you are running.

blueriver · Jul 27, 2012

Rio_Grande said:
We run a pto pump and push water with nutrient mix. I mix it in the tank which ensures a properly measured amount of nutrient. I never liked the suction setups because if the re is no way to KNOW how much you are running.

Can you describe the setup and perhaps post some pictures.

Rio_Grande · Jul 28, 2012

See if I can get a pic tomorrow but it is really simple, the tank sits on a plastic pallet that puts the valve about level with the pto pump intake, Come out the other side of the pump with a 3 way manifold. 2 lines out to sprinklers and one to a hose that goes into the tank. My nutrient mixes 1.75 pounds to 250 gal of water. I start the pump with the recerculating hose open and in the tank, then slowly shake in the nutrient. Takes less than 2 min to get a uniform color, blue, green or aqua depending on the nutrient I am running and then I switch to the sprinklers and shut down the recurculating line. When I get done wattering i purge with clean water and fill tanks for next trip. It does really good. there is over 200 feet of head hose on it and it runs 3 sprinklers at that distance. Not perfect setup but it works. Would be more efficent to run the pto pump off of a small engine though.

blueriver · Jul 28, 2012

A friend is doing what I want to do on his reel ... about 30 miles south ... I went and looked at his and then stopped and got my supplies ... I plumbed it in and will see how it goes ... I'll shoot some pictures and give an update.

blueriver · Aug 6, 2012

I've not got around to the pictures ... I plumbed into the suction side with a brass ball valve and a 1/4" line. With some rancher science I taped a yard stick to the hard hose on the reel ... my calculations indicated I needed to move at 8.16 inches a minute ... (I adjusted the reel speed until this was achived) and put out a pint of fertilize in 30" that would give me 14 gallons per acre or about 154 lbs to the acre of fertilize. I ran a stop watch as the system sucked from a pint jar and either closed or opened the ball value until I was close to sucking up the pint.

I've ran across the Bermuda field with these settings and when I was done I had about 15 gallons of fertilize left ... or basicly I had enough for about an acre left so I fiqure that was pretty darn close. Next time I put out liquid fertilize I think I'll just set the reel speed about 1 turn slower and then it should be almost spot on ... I applied the fertilizer with 1" and then ran right over it again with straight water and another 1" ... now I'm going to cover it with 2" of water, that should take about 75 hrs and then I'm done ... perhaps that will give me a cutting about the first week of September ... I also added weed spray to the liquid fertilize.