Went out and ran the irrigation on the millet crop. It's starting to look really good out there. I've got two planting dates, the first round is 20 days old and the second is 7. Excited to see how this stuff continues on.




Incredible redneck system here but it works.



Interested to see how the double combo of smartweed and millet works out.

Nice! Want to see the after flooding pics when that happens too. Hope all that work pays off.

Nice

Awesome!!!!

Looking great!

Hard work will pay off!

Looks great! Do you pull your irrigation when it's ready to flood? How often do you water and is it on a timer?

Thanks

So the irrigation system is pretty simple. I got a Wayne semi trash pump with float on it from Northern Tool. It is rated for like 3900 gph and has a 1 1/2" outlet. I used a threaded PVC male adapter to thread into the pump outlet. I wanted a rigid pipe to come out of the pump and then I can either hook it to sections of PVC or I can use the PVC discharge hose (I use both since that is what I had). Once I get the 1 1/2" onto dry ground, I used a PVC y pipe to split the stream. From there I used PVC reducers and necked it down to 3/4" (two of these equal the 1 1/2" input). From there I used 3/4" pipe since it was cheaper.

I thought about using only 1/2" pipe and splitting the stream with a 3 way y pipe, but it really wasn't any cheaper than the 3/4" so I stuck with that. Then I used PVC T connectors that had 1/2" threaded on the top of the T. From there I was able to screw in the connectors you would use for your sprinklers. I tried many other types of rotating sprinklers and I just couldn't get enough pressure to power the bigger setups so on the areas closest to the pump I used these cheap $3 metal sprinklers and the added the bushes type the further away I got.

Good job. Have same situation. Got decent rain yesterday and today. Planted flats last 3 weeks. Tons of smartweed. Got water control in last week. Should be a good season.

looks good. Just wondering though, approx. how big of an area are you trying to irrigate? In the places where it is feasible, I flood irrigate Japanese millet. In other areas where I can't do this, I plant browntop and its actually not too bad. Just enough moisture to get it to germinate, sprout, and grow about 4 inches and it will typically go ahead and make a seed pod. Just a thought for you in the future...milo is easy to grow as well. Just depends on your situation. I have no realistic way to irrigate a hundred plus acres YET lol but "dirty" milo when everything takes right is just as good, if not better.

This area is no where near that big so very easy to irrigate with my setup.

Muddyz, we have an area about 20 acres that we have planted and will try your irrigation system next year. These pictures were taken last week before we got some rain so hopefully this week looks a bit better. We are lucky and our duck marsh area collects water from a water treatment plant that has a constant discharge so this year we dug a small irrigation trench and used a 9hp trash pump to pump into the ditch to get some growth. Where the water did get has cause the millet to grow like crazy. We didn't fertilize at all this year as we were way behind on our work due to the heavy spring rains. We plan on it next year. This area was built by DU 30 years ago but hasn't been drained in about 5-10 yrs. Since we started pumping last week we have had a few groups of teal land right in the middle of the growing millet probably less than 3" of water.

They want 3" of water

Mine is looking great. Here is one section. Tons smartweed behind it