Plants can be categorised according to their water needs and irrigation systems should be designed and selected to suit the needs of the plant. Using irrigation water efficiently also requires a proper selection of irrigation methods for the plants and different areas and soil types. Timing and scheduling of irrigation should also be selected according to the crop requirements.
Drip systems are one of the most widely used types of hydroponic systems around the world, both for home growers as well as commercial growers alike. That’s mainly because it’s an easy concept and needs few parts, yet it’s a very versatile and effective type of hydroponic system. Even though it’s an easy concept, it won’t limit your imagination when building your systems. The way a drip system works is just like it sounds, you simply drip nutrient solution on the plant’s roots to keep them moist.
Hydroponic drip systems can easily be designed in many ways, as well as from small to large systems. But they’re especially useful for larger plants that take a lot of root space. That’s because you don’t need large volumes of water to flood the system, and the drip lines are easy to run over longer spaces. As well as when using a larger amount of growing media for larger plants, more growing media retains more moisture than smaller amounts, and that’s particularly beneficial to large plants because it’s more forgiving to the plants. Forgiving meaning that the plants aren’t as sensitive to watering times, so they don’t stress immediately if they don’t get watered on time for one reason or another.
How a hydroponic drip system operates is simple. Water (nutrient solution) is pumped up from the reservoir through tubing to the top of the growing media (where the plant’s roots are), from there it drips out of the tubing onto the growing media. The nutrient solution drains down soaking both the roots and growing media to the bottom of the container. From there the nutrient solution flows through an opening/s, and gravity allows the nutrient solution to flow downhill through tubing back to the reservoir. It’s important to remember that the plant-growing container needs to be at least 18cm or so above the top of the reservoir, so that gravity can drain the excess water back to it (water won’t flow uphill without a pump).
