Hello fellow home steaders and market gardeners. One of the challenges facing many market gardeners is irrigation - however much challenging is choosing the right kind of irrigation. Today, i will be highlighting the advantages of sprinklers over drip irrigation, based on my personal experiences.
Sprinklers plays the role of Nitrogen fixation.
One of the major nutrient plant requires is Nitrogen. Atmospheric air contains 78% of nitrogen. As the sprinkler systems dispersed water to the crops as rain, the water dissolves the nitrogen from air and gives it to soil, thereby adding nutritive value to soil. This is one of the reasons for increase in yield.
- Reduces pest and insects attack: Pests and insects get washed away during sprinkler irrigation.
Other advantages over drip irrigation are:
Less Cost: For one acre of installation of drip cost around NGN240,000(USD$660)+/-, whereas by using Sprinkler System, the cost comes round NGN60,000 only(about US$160) If a farmer owns 10 acres of farm land if he is interested in drip, he has to install drip for the whole land area at a cost of NGN2,400,000+/- (about US$6,666) where as if they use sprinkler system on the same land space, they will spend a fraction of that - N360,000(about US$1,000).
*Clogging problem In drip, the water oozes out through a small hole less than 1 mm, which gets clogged by the calcium carbonate and other chemicals available in water. So, after a period of one year most of the drippers get clogged. In Sprinkler system, there is no clogging problem irrespective of the quality of water.
*Less Maintenance