As gardeners, we know that drip irrigation is our watering method of choice, but another issue is at hand: how much and how often?
When you first transplant your tomatoes, a good practice is to water them in with overhead watering either from a hose or a watering can. It is also smart to provide a starter fertilizer either in the organic or inorganic form. For the first 3 days or so I typically use a hose with a rain nozzle attached. This assures the rooting zone is completely saturated before I begin drip irrigation. In the subsequent applications of water from the drip irrigation system, the water will more easily wet the rooting zone of the soil profile.
A general rule of thumb states that tomatoes will need about 1 inch of water per week from rain or supplemental irrigation in order to grow vigorously. In arid regions about 2 inches per week are required. In addition, your plants will probably need an inch more per week from your drip irrigation system during their most productive stages.
At this point you may be thinking "How do I know when I have applied an inch of water?" That is a very good question and one that can be answered if you know the output of the emitters on your drip irrigation hose. You can usually find this information stated on the packaging the tubing came in. It may be given in gallons per minute (gpm) or gallons per hour (gph) as a function of a specified length of drip irrigation hose or on a per emitter basis.
Let's say your hose manufacturer indicates each emitter has a flow rate of 0.5 gph. If the spacing of emitters is 12 inches and your row is 100ft long, every hour would produce 0.2 inches of water. So, to provide 1 inch per week you would need to water for 5 hours. My recommendation is to not put that on all at once (unless Mother Nature provides it for you). It is better to apply it twice a week.
In the above example you would water on Monday and Thursday for 2.5 hours each day. Remember that this will need to be increased later in the season.
The most important message to take from this article is to keep your drip irrigation efforts consistent. Some major problems can arise from over or under watering. These include blossom end rot and tomato splitting.
Using drip irrigation in your tomato garden can help you achieve great results. It's not difficult to understand how drip irrigation works. You simply need to do the math.
Author Resource:-
Thomas Smith is a professional horticulturalist and the author of "How To Produce 15 To 25 Pounds Of Ripe, Juicy Tomatoes PER PLANT - 15 Tips and Secrets Revealed". Find out how you can grow tomato plants that yield over 20 pounds each at at Grow-More-Tomatoes.
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