Irrigation Training Series

This webinar will teach how ground-truthing soil moisture probes is an essential element for successfully managing soil moisture throughout the growing season.

Soil moisture probes are essential for saving water and ensuring crops have sufficient water and nutrients in the root zone during all phases of the plant’s phenological cycle.

However, recognizing when to check your soil moisture probes’ readings, how to interpret core soil samples by the hand feel method, and how to set upper and lower boundaries is as much art as it is science.

In this webinar, we will go to the field to take core soil samples, compare our findings with a soil moisture probe and work through actual examples of using the data to improve water management for your crops.

This webinar will teach how ground-truthing soil moisture probes is an essential element for successfully managing soil moisture throughout the growing season.

Soil moisture probes are essential for saving water and ensuring crops have sufficient water and nutrients in the root zone during all phases of the plant’s phenological cycle.

However, recognizing when to check your soil moisture probes’ readings, how to interpret core soil samples by the hand feel method, and how to set upper and lower boundaries is as much art as it is science.

In this webinar, we will go to the field to take core soil samples, compare our findings with a soil moisture probe and work through actual examples of using the data to improve water management for your crops.

Join us to learn:

How to ground truth a soil moisture probe

Why soil moisture probes are essential for water management

How to verify your soil moisture probes reading

How to take a core soil sample

There are three basic irrigation fittings available, and your selection of the three makes a significant difference in water savings.

Selecting the correct fitting for your particular irrigation project does not seem that difficult until you do a google search. So many fittings and so little time. This drives you crazy because picking the wrong fitting results in callbacks, water waste, and slowdowns on the job. You don’t need any of that, and we are here to help again this week.

Once you understand the basics of irrigation fittings and why the particular fitting is perfect for your job, selecting the “right” irrigation fitting every time will be easy.

This week Andy Belingheri will step us through to process of irrigation fittings, and after the webinar, you will understand:

Soil surfactants are a big buzzword in the water management world today. Soil surfactants improve the availability and performance of irrigation water and other soil-applied products throughout the plant root zone, optimizing the growing environment. This means they save water and increase production.

Cory Broad is a Certified Crop Adviser, Certified Irrigation Designer, and Certified Ag Irrigation, Specialist and is very interested in using surfactants to help with the megadrought in the West. He has been active with them, focusing on water savings and crop production. He is going to share with us his experience with surfactants.

We keep saving water, but the rates keep going up. This is a common complaint, and the situation feels like a battle we can’t win. However, understanding the cost of water and knowing how your water rates are determined and why rates are different throughout the country makes the water rate puzzle much easier to accept. This week we are fortunate to have Brett Walton from Circle of Blue stepping us through the basics of water rates helping us understand why saving water is key to keeping rates from skyrocketing in the future.

In addition, he has some different thoughts on inflation and water rates and some ideas on the drought.

Filters are a crucial component of any irrigation system, yet often a detail overlooked or undervalued. Installing an irrigation filter on your drip irrigation system prevents clogging of emitters and reduces wear and tear on the system. Sand and organic materials are the primary objects you want to remove, and knowing which filter works best for each is essential. In addition, filters require minor maintenance, are relatively inexpensive, and help provide reliable use of drip irrigation season after season.

Selecting the correct filter for your system depends on what you are filtering out, and there are lots of choices when choosing a filter.

Michael Pippen will step us through his process for selecting the right filter for each job.

The start of the season is one of the craziest we’ve seen. We have $8 corn, $11 wheat, and $18 soybeans. Soil moisture, water, and drought are at the front of everyone’s mind. In addition, inputs like nitrogen are skyrocketing.

This week, we will look at how growers around the country are responding to these variables and see what we can learn from some of the best practices in the field. During this webinar, you will learn:

Friday is Earth Day, and the theme of Earth Day this year is investing in our planet; however, getting people to pay money to solve problems years in the future is challenging.

For most people paying hurts, it means going without something today, and the benefit is for someone else in the future. Society is focused on the present, and the future exists only in our heads. However, this is changing…slowly, but there is progress.

Water is critical to our future, and investment in water ensures a good quality of life going forward.

Gregg Black joins us this week to discuss ways to invest in water management. He will explain various investments you can make for your irrigation that save significant amounts of water. He will step you through the easiest and quickest ways to save.

The average American throws out 4.5 pounds of trash every single day. It may not seem all that much, but with over 300 million people in the United States, that is roughly 728,000 tons of daily garbage. What makes this bad is over 70% of what goes into landfills could be recycled or used for compost.

Composting is the speeding up of the natural process of decomposition. The goal is to improve soil composition by returning useful waste back to your garden. Today many cities have prohibited green waste from your garbage. Now is the best time ever to learn the basics of composting.

Laura Wilkinson is a Master Composter, and she is joining us this week for a webinar. She is going to cover the basic how-to of composting. She will also cover hot or cold composting. Bokashi and vermiculture will be discussed too. Hear updates on composting in your yard, your green bins, and how vermiculture composting is a natural insect repellant and fertilizer.

During this session, you will learn:

Managing water accurately and consistently across multiple irrigation controllers is an age-old dilemma for landscapers. It’s a labor-intensive part of the upkeep of a healthy, well-manicured, and presentable landscape, requiring considerable time and resource costs.

Jain UNITY technology brings significant time savings and operational efficiencies to multi-controller management. Through your UNITY online account, you have smart, central access to simultaneously change the programming for groups of irrigation stations (zones) you choose across different controllers. Use these groups to effectively and directly change irrigation scheduling at the station (zone) level of your entire site, such as:

The fastest and easiest way for applying changes to a collection of similar stations (zones) across multiple controllers. For example, you’ve changed from spray heads to MP Rotators on your turf stations.

Use Manage Groups to identify all your turf stations on a site, and then make the same irrigation method change to all stations at once.