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<pre>I have a small grove of young olive trees. Where I live in California, water
is expensive so I set them up with a drip irrigation system. The question I
have is how often and much should I be watering the trees? The trees are
about 5 feet high and are in the ground for a year and a half. Currently I
have two 2 gallon per hour drippers on each tree. They are watered for 1
hour once every 5 days. Is this enough water? The soil is mostly clay with
some rocks.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks
Scott


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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<pre>Scott:

Check the water calculators at
http://www.oliveoilsource.com/irrigation.htm Some are
quite complex but fun if you like numbers. Then look
at some historic figures. According to UC Davis
people, the biggest mistake they see is underwatering
in California.

John Deane
Olive Oil Source

--- Scott Drotman <drotnet@...> wrote:
> I have a small grove of young olive trees. Where I
> live in California, water
> is expensive so I set them up with a drip irrigation
> system. The question I
> have is how often and much should I be watering the
> trees? The trees are
> about 5 feet high and are in the ground for a year
> and a half. Currently I
> have two 2 gallon per hour drippers on each tree.
> They are watered for 1
> hour once every 5 days. Is this enough water? The
> soil is mostly clay with
> some rocks.
>
> Any ideas would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks
> Scott
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
> removed]
>
>


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<pre>> I have a small grove of young olive trees. Where I live in California,
water
> is expensive so I set them up with a drip irrigation system. The question
I
> have is how often and much should I be watering the trees? The trees are
> about 5 feet high and are in the ground for a year and a half. Currently I
> have two 2 gallon per hour drippers on each tree. They are watered for 1
> hour once every 5 days. Is this enough water? The soil is mostly clay with
> some rocks.
>
> Any ideas would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks
> Scott

Scott,

I wouldn't be watering by the calendar, but rather by checking on the soil's
moisture. There are various ways of doing this, digging a hole is probably
the simplest, but the down side of drippers is that the water doesn't
usually travel far from the emitter, whereas the roots will cover quite a
large area. In a clay soil I find one good soak over a wide area, once a
month is better than dripping a bit each week.

Timing is also a major factor. Its your late spring / early summer I assume,
so put as much water on around flowering to get a decent fruitset, but
perhaps you might back off again after fruitset. When does your rainfall
occur? You do get rainfall, I hope?

Regards,

Mike Wilson
Hunter Valley
Australia.
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<pre>Mike,
Thanks for the reply.

We have a very Mediterranean type climate. That is a wet winter (November
thought May) and no rain the remainder of the year. We had our last rain a
week and a half ago and that should be it until Oct. The trees are young but
are beginning to flower now. The drips are on once every five days. I have a
nice sized garden/orchard and don't have the time to hand water. I use
timers and drip or soaker hoses everywhere. Just trying to make sure the
Olive trees get enough water these first few years.

Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Wilson [mailto:mike.wilson@...]
Sent: Friday, May 31, 2002 2:31 PM
To: OliveOil@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [OliveOil] Amount of Water for young trees


> I have a small grove of young olive trees. Where I live in California,
water
> is expensive so I set them up with a drip irrigation system. The question
I
> have is how often and much should I be watering the trees? The trees are
> about 5 feet high and are in the ground for a year and a half. Currently I
> have two 2 gallon per hour drippers on each tree. They are watered for 1
> hour once every 5 days. Is this enough water? The soil is mostly clay with
> some rocks.
>
> Any ideas would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks
> Scott

Scott,

I wouldn't be watering by the calendar, but rather by checking on the soil's
moisture. There are various ways of doing this, digging a hole is probably
the simplest, but the down side of drippers is that the water doesn't
usually travel far from the emitter, whereas the roots will cover quite a
large area. In a clay soil I find one good soak over a wide area, once a
month is better than dripping a bit each week.

Timing is also a major factor. Its your late spring / early summer I assume,
so put as much water on around flowering to get a decent fruitset, but
perhaps you might back off again after fruitset. When does your rainfall
occur? You do get rainfall, I hope?

Regards,

Mike Wilson
Hunter Valley
Australia.




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<pre>> Mike,
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> We have a very Mediterranean type climate. That is a wet winter (November
> thought May) and no rain the remainder of the year. We had our last rain a
> week and a half ago and that should be it until Oct. The trees are young
but
> are beginning to flower now. The drips are on once every five days. I have
a
> nice sized garden/orchard and don't have the time to hand water. I use
> timers and drip or soaker hoses everywhere. Just trying to make sure the
> Olive trees get enough water these first few years.
>
> Scott
>

Your welcome!

As olives evolved in a Mediterranean climate there shouldn't be too much
need for supplementary water, but if you have trees in the ground for 18
months and they are up to 5 feet I'd say that your growth seems about right.
Are they bushy or scraggly?

Bear in mind that a 5 foot high tree will have a root zone with a diameter
of up to 10 feet, rather than just to the drip line as is common with many
other trees. This wide, shallow root system all needs water, so your
drippers are going to only water a small section of the roots. Most of the
books on olive growing have a diagram of how the olive tree roots system
develops, so have a look and work accordingly.

I am about to install a system of soaker hoses on a grove of trees where the
drippers have outlived their usefulness. I tried to replace the drippers
with sprays, only to find that the pipes were too small to deliver enough
water to effectively run sprays, so rather than dig up a couple of
kilometres of underground pipes, I'm taking the easy option of a new main
from another source, into a flexible "garden hose" type pipe, then into
soaker hoses that I can move from row to row. Labour intensive, but cheaper
in the short term, and if it works as well as I hope I can take it from
there.

What is your soil like? How well does water travel through the soil profile?

Regards,

Mike.
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