Water Management

Not all trees and shrubs require constant watering. The ever changing root development and structure in newly potted and older plants, different moisture needs in varieties of plants and the daily, sometimes hourly weather changes. Other nurseries find it easier to use the keep it wet at all times method. This can lead to root disease, nutrition deficiencies and a host of other problems.

At Dream-time we decided our customers deserve better than that so we have lifted the bar using the latest technologies.

Starting with ECH₂O probes to measure the dielectric constant of our potting mix in order to find the volumetric water content. The ECH₂O was chosen for its low sensitivity to fertilizer, temperature and potting mix textures.  Hourly reading are recorded using a telemetry  radio logging system and M-Log monitoring soft ware, this gives us a base to set the full and refill points on various crops at different developments stages.

A professional automatic weather station was added to measure wind speed, solar radiation and humidity using the daily information from these sensors a virtual sensor is set to log and calculate ET ( evapotranspiration ) add a rain gauge along with the finding of the ECH₂O data we were ready to set the parameters in the irrigation systems computer. Excessive wind and rain fall high and low parameters are also used.

When dream-time designed the irrigation system, complexed  prerequisites were set, such as the system needed to provide high volumes of filtered water, have no programming limitations, be able to be controlled offsite and control over 160 valves in our growing areas.

Colin Darke of Great Southern Irrigation exceeded these prerequisites resulting in all plants throughout the nursery receiving watering to there individual needs.

What does this mean for you…?
You receive a healthy plant not forced grown, free of disease, nutritionally balanced and able to adapt to its new environment faster.

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