Portable water tanks for irrigation (Pasture)

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I want to start some crown vetch and birdsfoot trefoil in my pasture. I figure I'll make a strip of each. My reading suggests that they are a bit tricky to get established, so I'm thinking that I should probably take care of them for the first two weeks or so.

The pasture where I want to start them has no irrigation close by.

I have a tractor, a trailer and a pto driven pump. I'm thinking that if I get an above ground water tank, I can put it on the trailer, drag the trailer with the tractor and have somebody on the back of the trailer manually water the strips of seeds. Maybe once or twice a day until the seedlings pop up, then once every one to three days.

The tank is designed to be stationary, so I'm a little worried about screwing the tank up.

Does anybody see a problem with my wild scheme?

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@javaranch.com), September 02, 2001

Answers

Response to Portable water tanks for irrigation

HOw long is each strip? How much water do you need? How do you plan on filling the tank?

what your describing is your basic spray tank. A wand or boom arm could be fixed to spray the seedlings as your drive by. No need to have a second hand.

The tanks have no machanical parts so there nothing to "screw up"

-- Gary (gws@redbird.net), September 02, 2001.


Response to Portable water tanks for irrigation

I don't mean to keep anyone from working real hard, but why don't you just rent a seeder from a farm service and drill your seed. As long as you aren't in a drought,this should work. Put the fertilizer with the seed, there is a seperate bin for this in the drill. It cost about 5-6 dollers per acre to rent. some require you to buy their seed. Oh yes, your farm ag service also may have a sponcered drill too. that is when the gov. fronts the money to purchase the item and a sponcer takes care of it and sees to the renting of same. Ihis may not be what you are looking for, it could save you a few labor intensive days. I have hand seeded both on fresh harrowed ground and had no troubled with it coming up. i went back over it again to cover the seed, so it wouldn't get burned out. lexi

-- Lexi Green (whitestone11@hotmail.com), September 02, 2001.

Response to Portable water tanks for irrigation

We are in a drought right now. Worse than last year's drought.

Plus we're not looking to do a whole lot of seed. About ten pounds in a strip about 300 yeards long.

We can get the water from a pond. I figure we can use the PTO pump to fill the tank.

I'm thinking that this scheme will work well for plots where I smothered weeds with moldy hay and covered the patch with some compost/soil and pasture seed. If we smother a dozen patches, we can swing by those patches once a day to water them a bit until the seeds germinate.

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@javaranch.com), September 02, 2001.


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