WATERING
casing soil on the bags standing on the floor of the sheds. I was amazed that each bag was sprayed by hand, so with my engineering background I came up with a system to automate this process. We installed plastic pipes with a lot of spray heads above the bags so all the grower had to do was turn on a tap to automatically water all the bags. An inexpensive system that led me to the realm of watering in mushroom sheds. The system was often regulated by a timer, and a fixed water meter allowed growers to see the total volume of water given to the bags. We installed many of these simple systems here in Ireland, but then the Dutch-style shelving growing systems started to appear here too.”
have been designed to operate with that system. Water can of course be applied manually, in which case a hose with a sprinkler head or nozzle attachment is normally used. Manual watering is laborious work, and requires a ladder or picking platform so all the beds be sprayed one by one. A single hose and nozzle don’t supply much water either, so applying two litres per square metre, for example, takes a long time. Another disad- vantage is that its success entirely depends on the person doing the spraying. It is boring work, so the ‘sprayer’ may quickly decide to give less water and cut the time spent on the task. A supervisor must also check the person regularly and visualise the volume using a bucket or water meter, so the sprayer is clear about how much time must be spent on each square metre to apply the right volume of water. The advantage of this system is naturally the very low invest- ment cost - only a low water pressure is required and the water reaches the beds gently in large droplets. A step up are watering trees or wate- ring lorries. These systems are still moved manually, but deliver water to all the beds at the same time. They have to be moved along all the shelves and from room to room. Currently, there are also various automatic watering systems on the market, an overview of which appears below.
Colwell in Ireland
One of the automatic or semi-automatic watering systems is the piping system offered by Colwell Brothers, Ireland. In this system, pipes with small jet nozzles are installed above each bed. Water is delivered to all the beds, or all the beds in a single row of shelves, at the same time. On the surface it appears simple, but is actually more complex. Paddy Colwell explains the important elements of this system. “When I was a student I had a weekend job working at numerous mushroom farms in Ireland. A regular group of us used to apply casing by spreading
10 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
▲ This system allows watering without removing all the equipment from the room first.
▼ The traditional Dofra spray arm that covers the entire bed.
Snowball effect Kieran Walsh, currently owner of various mushroom farms, approached Paddy Colwell to ask if he could engineer a system with nozzles for the Dutch shelves. Colwell: “When Walsh asked us, we ran a trial on one bed in a shed, then over the whole shed. I think we spent about six months experimenting with all sorts of things, like the pipe diameter, the kind of nozzle and so on. Ultimately, we arrived at a system design that satisfied Walsh, with galvanised pipes and Naan nozzles. The right combination of pipe diameter, water pressure and type of nozzles is incredibly important, and we spent a long time finding the ideal combination. After Kieran Walsh, things went quiet for about four years before other growers, such as Jimmy Hackett and Peader McGee, started making cautious enquires. Then we noticed a real snowball effect, and I can safely say that in the meantime we have installed this system in more than 1000 growing rooms. Mainly in England and Ireland, but also beyond. We plan and develop all the details ourselves, and take care of
Ò
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64
