Fertigation Unit - Step 1

Frequently I’ve been asked to answer questions about nutrients. But what is nutrients? And how it works?

Nutritions is the “food” or the “vitamins” of the plants, since plants are live organism- every plant required their own “food”.

Same as humans, some need more vitamin A to be healthy and some lack of iron or sun to have the best health.

Plants are not a factory, so every and each of one of them must have their own nutrients and the amount of them. Moreover, each farm is different due the climate, sun expose, water supply, humidity and dozens of other factors. To calculate the necessary nutrients for the plant, you must examine all the factors ahead feeding them any nutrition, otherwise the results will be low or even worse- negative!

Due the fact our plants are alive, the quantity must be regulated in order to cultivate the most of them.

Humans don’t have the ability to regulate the exact amounts without modern technology. Fortunately, nowadays this technology available for us within reach.

The traditional way of supply nutrients - is mixing with water animals and fish feces or dissolve it in powder. This technique may seem as great thrifty way, however it is the less effective one, because there’s to accurate way to measure which nutrients or what is the quantity was given.

Moreover, light rain simply wash it all deep into soil which change the entire supply – some nutrients will be too much for our plant and some not enough.

Even usage of bought nutrients in bucket giving the plants will most likely have a negative result on the plants and huge disappointment for you.

In modern technology we control the exact nutrients in automated mode, with minimum human involvement and maximum results. The fertigation system pumping the exact amount of fertilizers deeply combined with the amount of water necessary.

There is hundreds of varieties of fertigation unit, from the most primitive units with a weak pump which not enough to distribute the whole mixture, or thin pipes which get torn in a very short time.

To the most advanced with full smartphone control which is very expensive and not affordable for everyone.

We must find a system in the middle - affordable but the most effective.

The most common are fertigation systems collected on the basis of proportional metering pumps.

These pumps are available in several modifications and allow you to assemble fertigation units of various capacities and configurations.

The design of proportional pumps is quite simple, but probably everything is ingenious and based on simplicity.

The pump consists of a plastic housing uniting two cylinders in which the pistons move. The top cylinder is the pump motor. Water passing through makes the piston move, and through the rod, this piston is connected to the lower piston of a smaller diameter located in the lower cylinder.

The valve system and the adjustable volume of the lower cylinder make it possible to suck in the mother liquor of fertilizers and feed it into the line, mixing with irrigation water.

Since the pump runs on running water and its speed depends solely on the amount of water passing through the pump, this metering pump does not need external sources of energy, and since the frequency of movement of the piston in the cylinder depends on the amount of water flowing through it, the mother the solution is added in strict proportion to the amount of water flowing through the pump.

This technical solution allows us to ensure absolute accuracy in the dosage of fertilizers and thereby provide ideal conditions for the growth and development of our plants.

Adjusting the amount of fertilizer added to irrigation water is very simple. At the bottom of the pump, there is an adjusting sleeve, and below it is a scale on which divisions are plotted showing how many percent of the mother liquor is added to the water flowing through the pump.

Having made several turns of this sleeve, you can easily change the concentration of the nutrient solution.

It should be added that the best option for using fertigation is its work together with drip irrigation systems.

Here is such a simple, reliable and inexpensive solution, we consider it optimal for use on farm fields, in greenhouses, in personal plots and even cottages.

For different application conditions, different amounts of water and different amounts of additives to the water used are needed. For this, proportional metering pumps of various capacities and designed for different percentages of the added mother liquor were developed.

For small areas, pumps with a capacity of 2.5 cubic meters per hour are used, for medium ones 10 cubic meters per hour and for large ones - 25 cubic meters per hour.

These pumps are designed for continuous dosage of fertilizers or any chemical or biological products into the flowing water with a fixed and adjustable dosage from 0.2% to 10%.

Pumps are available for use with various chemicals. There are models designed to work with particularly aggressive substances, such as acids, chlorine-containing solutions, etc.

The device is compact, reliable, durable and designed for both indoor and outdoor use.

Each of the pumps designed to supply 1 sort of nutrition or a combination of NPK nutrients.

It must be applied for soil farms as well for hydroponics farms for the best “feeding” of our beloved plants.

I hope you learned something new today, in the next chapter we will talk about the importance of a green-house or net-house depends on you climate, or the newest product in the market GreeNet-house©.

Stay updated with our latest informative content, and share this post to your friends so they can also expend their knowledge!

Thank you and till the next time Roman from Agrosheriff ltd. Global