Kevin Matthews Resolves Drip Irrigation Issues Amid Severe Drought
30 Jul 242m 19s

In the midst of a severe drought, Kevin Matthews faces a critical challenge with his drip irrigation system. Watch as he diagnoses the problem and swiftly implements a solution to protect his crops from further damage

00:00 So you can see right here in the soybeans this road right straight in front of us, right there, 00:04 it has not been getting water and it's due to the kink on the old style risers That connected Into the 00:10 Pipe in the ground that Hooks to your drip tape. This is your drip tape right here that's hooked in, and this is the old style 00:18 Riser. This area right in here was kink and it would not let the water go through. It is serving like an orifice, 00:24 so it's getting very little water and the fix for that is what's called a Q flex and that's the new style. 00:29 And you can tell the rigidness of it, it's like corrugated pipe and it just bends really good as you can see. 00:36 And what you do is you, you'll snap it into the PVC pipe in the ground and then you'll form it 00:42 however the ground lays, slide it inside the drip tape, Put two stainless steel wire ties On it, and you don't have 00:48 to worry about these things kinking no more. This Red clay's so tough on it. That's what causes the kink 00:54 and the traffic patterns, especially here at cooling where we do so much test plots. So the traffic coming in and out. 01:00 This is one reason we like to have headlands on our drip tape on our areas where these old style risers are. 01:07 It's really important that we have headlands and we don't come across 'em with our heavy equipment. So that is the advantage of having the Q flex, 01:15 which the SDI systems that are put in now, you would never put one in with this old style riser. Everything will be done with a Q flex. 01:22 They just don't give trouble if you tie 'em properly and you don't have a leak. Once you start it up, it's pretty much good 01:28 for the life of the product. It's, it's just the only way to go. But anyhow, this is just an update on what's going on 01:35 here at Cool Me. Today we're just trying to make sure these plots get water. We've been over a month with no rain 01:41 and the only water this crop's getting is from the irrigation. You can see in the background beside the soybeans, 01:47 my neighbor's corn that's non irrigated. It's, it's taking it on the chin pretty good, getting pretty rough just to show you the difference. 01:54 You can see the color, it's no trouble right there to see in behind me. The irrigated right directly next to my left shoulder. 02:03 And then on the right behind me is the dry land where it's non irrigated. If we don't get rain before long, 02:09 the irrigated is in the river bottom is probably the only crop we have here. Y'all stay safe.

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