Man our plants have been growing a ton since we first planted them. On Tuesday we were able to walk around the plots in between irrigation and measure and take pictures of what our plants are looking like. A majority of our annuals, such as wheat and barley, are past a foot tall! However, as for our perennials, they are moving slow in the growing process. Most of the perennials were below six inches, but on the bright side, all of our plants germinated and are at some length. One of the things that really surprised me was how weak and spotty blue bunch grass, Idaho fescue, and timothy were doing. Why this surprised me, because in a past internship I analyzed these forages and saw them ravishing even in the heat of summer and no water. Another thing that surprised me was how well the peas and triticale were doing compared to all the other plants. These two plants alone triple the height as to what other plants in our plot were. One thing is for sure though, is it is very important to seed on time and know what conditions and climates plants need.

As most of you know, calculating water head can be measured all sorts of ways. However, for our case I was able to learn how our experiment station measures water head. At the head gate we have a measuring device that has two sides to it with a gate that is set at two and a half or five at all times. On either sides of the gate are two measurement sticks in a tenth of an inch that you can refer to as how high the water is. In order to calculate water head, you take both those numbers and refer to table where you will follow down to where both numbers meet. At that meeting point is what your CFS is currently in the ditch. Benefits to using submerged orifice measuring device in your ditch, allows you to run specifics as to how much water you are using, makes neighboring water rights users happier, and gives you the ability to be specific with calculations when the water master asks what you are pulling down your ditch and why you may need water of drought years.

I just wanted to throw out a quick reminder how important it is to check your pump during irrigation and make sure it is taken care of properly. Today we had the packing come completely out to the pump and we had to do an emergency shut down till we could make repairs. We were shut down for four hours of irrigation, which can be a lot in the long and short term. The packing on our pump allows for water not to gush out of the pump, but it also self-cools it. This means that it is important to have a little water coming out to cool the pump, but too much and have serious damage on the pump and can put you out of irrigation for the whole season. So make sure you maintain your pump and know the specifics as to what it needs and what are red flags.

Well in this short blog, all I have to say is if you have never had irrigation problems of some sort of variation, then you aren’t farming. These past two weeks we have been playing with finding the right amount of PSI to run through our lines and get our sprinklers to work properly. With water flowing down the ditch not being an issue no more, now we need to figure out how to better utilize it. Our pump allows us to set the PSI and move water at that pressure. However, between the pump and our riser heads, the water makes eight 90 degree angles. This is important because it slows down water significantly, especially since we have aluminum pipe running all the way from the pump. What does this all mean you may ask, well in short it means that we lose about 3 to 6 PSI from the pump to the sprinkler heads. So in order to fix it, we need to move our recommended 37 PSI for our sprinklers heads to 40-42 PSI to compensate for the bends and water pressure lost between the pump and the sprinkler risers.

Along with PSI calculation, we had fun working with Mel, Precision Rains pipe expert, and helped him put together old and problematic pipe and make it whole again. We were able to make fifty-dollar pipe into 1,000 after costs for Mel’s labor. The trick though with old pipe is that it tends to split when you go and try to compress pipe inside of it. So instead what we did is we used appropriate amounts of new pipe and spliced it with old pipe and made repairs that way. A good tid-pit that is good to consider that Mel told us, is in order to keep your pipe is good condition and last longer, is in the winter you set the pipe on top of either wood blocks every ten feet or on the pipe trailer to avoid corrosion by soil and weather damage in the off season. Furthermore, it is also good to keep scrap parts and pieces of pipe around, because you never know when it will be useful and you will need a part that you happened to throw out.

Well ladies and gentleman, its been now a little over a week since we had planted the seeds, and look at our field!

Man I can’t believe how big they are getting! With a little help with some rain and good sun light, these seeds have just taken off. However, are perennial seeds are still lagging compared to our annuals and triticale. What we have done though, is we have only been running sets of two, with three lines in one set and two lines in one set to make sure our HRTS on the pump don’t go over, and we have decided to change our sprinkler heads to a R33, maroon 26 plate to eliminate water shadows and get our perennials growing, and to perfect efficiency. All in all, we hope to be seeing our perennials start to grow and see more and more green starting to pop out in our field!

In the spirit of our nations independence day, we have blue and white rain gauges in our field to record how much water we are getting from the sprinklers and we have red and white bird reflect tape on our fiber glass sticks to detour the birds away from eating our seeds we just planted. All of which are important steps to help both the seeds germinate correctly and make sure that there is correct amounts of water being distributed around the field. But above all, its the 4th of July and what better to incorporate our nations colors in our experiment! Cheers!

Last week consisted of some pretty exciting news, we were finally able to seed our plots! However, what was more exciting, for me at least, is I was able to put the seed in the funnel cone of the seeder and drop the seed in their designated spots. For all who haven’t seeded before, let me tell you, it can be a little stressful. But by the end of the day, my co-worker Chris, my professor G, and I had an awesome system worked out. Chris’s job was to drive the tractor strait in the correct plots and make sure we weren’t overlapping with other plots. G’s job was to tell me when to drop the seed in the plots and tell me what seed should be next. As for my job, I was in charge of opening the little bags of seed, putting inoculate on the seeds if needed, put the seeds in the seed cone before the tractor got to the plot, drop the seed into the plots at the correct time, and make sure I was seeding the right plants in the correct order. Talk about stressed, and I mean worse than writing a final paper that is due in the next hour.  Although its difficulty, we were able to seed all our annual and perennial seeds that day and will start the preparation for irrigation! Oh, and I cant forget picture!

Towards the beginning of this week, we had ran into the problem of not having enough water go down the ditch to run the lines we need at all parts of the ranch. This drew concern, because we were seeding this week and needed to irrigate our testing field Friday. So Aj and I’s task was to help Austin and his crew to clear out all debris and  break down anything that was restricting the water flow from coming down stream. While cleaning out the ditch and collecting all kinds of debris, I had a came up with a list of things to note when you are using a ditch to receive your water:

1. It is important to do your “spring cleaning” before you have water in the ditch. This helps, because you start out the season with no bumps before you start needing the water and it allows you to keep up with blockages.

   

2.  If you can, burning the ditch and spraying it before the water comes in is very helpful. This way you have a clean shot to look at the water and be able to identify problems and limits the weeds that can pull from your current.
3. Talk with neighbors that may also use the ditch and build a plan as to how to maintain the ditch better and keep it going for all to enjoy.
4. Listening is your best tool when dealing with ditches. If you hear the sound of water, there is a pretty good chance that there is a blockage somewhere.
5. Maintaining the structure and embankments of the ditch are very important to consider, because if they aren’t maintained, you loose water speed, debris get caught easier, and water flooding are more likely.
6. It’s always good to keep an eye out for what your PSI and the amount of water your pump can take so you know the accurate amount of water you should be pushing down and you don’t go over you water right.