LANDSCAPING:

Photos

Rod Hamilton has been a landscape contractor for more than 20 years.  is a landscaper. Based in Thirlmere, New South Wales, he has prepared many hundreds of domestic and council areas.  He says: " after trying virtually every form of irrigation over the past 20 years I have found Leeaky Hose the best."

"It is so easy to install, convenient to use, and has the great advantage of being out of sight where it isn't a temptation to children to fiddle with, or children to destroy."

Typically, even in the heat of an Australian summer he recommends that it is used once a week for around 12 hours. "It gives even watering and my clients are highly unlikely to lose any plants," he adds.

BULB GROWING:

Early in 1987, tulip grower Cyclamania was looking for a more efficient watering system, situated at Romsey in South Central Victoria, Cyclamania specialises in growing and supplying 'early' Tulips and Desert Candle blooms to the Victorian market.

The tulips are grown mainly under cover in a mix of pinebark based potting mix, after the first seasons trials the Company has now switched totally to Leeaky Hose watering of it's hot house bulbs. Cyclamania had previously tried various drip systems which tended to block with the fertiliser put through from the automatic fertigator.

With the failure of drip systems the Company had been forced to rely on hand-watering which caused uneven growth, stress on labour on hot days and fungal disease problems.

Foxtail Lily or Desert Candle (Eremurus). Cyclamania is currently trialing Leeaky Hose externally in the Desert Candle being grown on broad acres on the farm, initial trial results have shown over 60% in water saving compared with overhead sprayers and bulb growth appears to be identical.

GARLIC:

Growing garlic with intermittent rainfall can be quite difficult and using overhead watering methods can have a bad effect on the quality of the garlic grown.

Steve and Lindy Appleton of Eurobodalla near Bega on the eastern coast of Australia have developed a commercial garlic farm to reduce Australia's heavy reliance on imported Asian garlics. In December 2000 the elected to begin converting their farm irrigation to Leeaky Hose. The Leeaky Hose is currently placed using 1 line per 3 beds of garlic and are fed directly from a ring main around each of the hectare sized plots.

Caption "Three times as efficient as Overhead Watering"
Steve and Lindy Appleton pump water with a petrol driven monoscrew pump at 1900 litres per hour three days a week to water 35750 garlic plants on a quarter acre. Lindy says this is equivalent to watering at 1mm of rain per hour.The 1000 metres of Leeaky Hose is laid in a grid 1.3 metres apart with four rows of garlic in raised beds between each run of hose. The pump uses 4 litres of petrol per day.

HEDGES:

Steve Brockoff Garden and Irrigation, based in the Victorian town of Romsey specialises in provision of hedges in landscaping. To increase "strike rate" of the hedge plants and reduce the need for regular insecticides the Company turned to Leeaky Hose. According to Steve the use of Leeaky Hose has not only achieved those goals but these installations has also proved to grow more rapidly. He attributes this to the fact that the cycling of water with Leeaky Hose encourages the seedlings to root more deeply, more rapidly, thus feeding on natural nutrients and greater resistance to wilt.

ORGANIC VEGETABLES

The Eastern Barossa Valley, north of Adelaide, is a rainshadow area, but with rich soil. The problem facing Waterways Farm Organics who wished to grow organic vegetables for the south east Australian market was that the single dam on the property did not contain enough water to water by overhead methods. In 1993 they turned to Leeaky Hose as a way of building a sizeable farm and maintaining it with their limited water supply.

"The 1993 trial proved we have been able to reduce water usage by 75-80%. The majority of the formed beds have a single run of Leeaky Hose in the centre of each 1.5 metre wide bed, place just below the surface, or on the surface and covered with mulch before the seedlings are planted."

Leeaky Hose has give us considerable time savings over all other systems. Watering flexibility is much greater with Leeaky Hose, as plants are generally deeper rooted. Constant checking of emitters has been eliminated. The larger wetted soil volume has led to longer intervals between watering cycles. Bernie Smith, Waterway Farm Organics.

TOBACCO

In 1997 the Government owned Tobacco Corporation of Indonesia approached the Leeaky Hose Distributer "JVDB" for a solution for irrigating tobacco crops on thier Samatra plantation. The Company had built a dam with a reasonable head above the plantation but was looking for efficient irrigation during the monsoon dry. The Company required the equivelant of 10mm per day into the bunds in which the tobacco was planted, each of the bunds was 200 metres long, it was deemed the 13mm (diametre) Leeaky Hose was the most effective, although it's water delivery distance is restriced to 100 metre runs. The solution was to feed 200 metre lengths of Leeaky Hose from 2" feeder pipes at each end of the bunds.

See PHOTOS

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