In Arizona residential landscapes here is what you find: Trees that are grossly out of scale with the small front yards. Landscape architects are obliged to "design" these plant spaces so that they look nice from the first minute, adequately filled with green matter. Unfortunately, if you plant an evergreen elm where "it seemed nice" on day one as a 24" boxed tree, like 20 feet away from the front face of the home, the tree will be touching the house in 5 years, and look stupid in 10. Also, many of the favorites "designed" into a property are profoundly messy, dropping huge amounts of litter regularly. Many are also very fast to spread by seed into places they do not belong. The common remedies are to spray them with contact or systemic herbicide. But worse yet, the litter is gathered by noisy leaf blowers that not only ruin many neighbor's peace and quiet contentedness, but these "maintenance professionals" flip litter over the block walls, littering other's spaces, while also wreaking havoc with community air quality. The EPA notices this and cites the counties for particulate pollution, and the landscape maintenance contractors drive away to their offices to submit their weekly invoices, oblivious to the damage they have done. Not sustainable. Far from wondrous. As an independent irrigation adviser for decades in Arizona, probably the most unrecognized error in this blog is the mention of irrigation system maintenance and monitoring irrigation times. As a contributor the the Residential Drip Irrigation Guideline by AMWUA, I have railed against a publication AMWUA calls Watering By The Numbers (WBTN). Their notion that trees should be fitted with 30 to 60 drip emitters SO THAT the desert tree can withstand 10 days between irrigation events is truly laughable. Arizona is unique, alright. Only in Arizona are the "conservationists" convinced that drip-micro irrigation isn't high frequency irrigation. No more that 12 emitters are required for any ornamental or crop orchard tree in Arizona. Water application rates need only be 0.04 to 0.08 inches per hour, the run times need to be 10 hours in the peak use period, and irrigation runs 3 to 4 times each Summer week. That's how Arizona Department of Transportation does it, but WBTN clings to former University of Arizona icon, Dr. Jimmy Tipton, his take on this matter. Strange how one prominent irrigation equipment company, friend of the university in material ways, in Tucson, never really accepted drip-micro irrigation, which makes sense since they are biggest advocate of sprinkler irrigated turf. (Think "collapse of pork belly prices after WHO carcinogen announcement"). Another UofA researcher also decried any and all benefits of drip irrigation. This, like the promised miracles of level basin irrigation in Ag-, seems to refute the any notion of drip irrigation. It starts with proponents of "50 emitters to wet 50% of the mature canopy area (Radius: 30 feet), then added, "desert adapted tree roots extend several feet beyond the drip line", so you better add 20 or 30 more emitters for that space (Canopy radius: 40 feet). What you end up with is essentially surface irrigated trees, just like sprinklers! With that much water deposited, of course you could leave the system off for ten days. But it is totally wrongheaded thinking. Dr. Tipton, correct in nearly every other way, never adopted the esteemed irrigation expert from Netafim Ami Charitan who explained so well how small volumes stored per event only mean higher irrigation frequency; the trees adapt and rootzones (wetted onions) are much more efficient.
Published by John Doe
In Arizona residential landscapes here is what you find:
Trees that are grossly out of scale with the small front yards. Landscape architects are obliged to "design" these plant spaces so that they look nice from the first minute, adequately filled with green matter. Unfortunately, if you plant an evergreen elm where "it seemed nice" on day one as a 24" boxed tree, like 20 feet away from the front face of the home, the tree will be touching the house in 5 years, and look stupid in 10.
Also, many of the favorites "designed" into a property are profoundly messy, dropping huge amounts of litter regularly. Many are also very fast to spread by seed into places they do not belong. The common remedies are to spray them with contact or systemic herbicide. But worse yet, the litter is gathered by noisy leaf blowers that not only ruin many neighbor's peace and quiet contentedness, but these "maintenance professionals" flip litter over the block walls, littering other's spaces, while also wreaking havoc with community air quality. The EPA notices this and cites the counties for particulate pollution, and the landscape maintenance contractors drive away to their offices to submit their weekly invoices, oblivious to the damage they have done. Not sustainable. Far from wondrous.
As an independent irrigation adviser for decades in Arizona, probably the most unrecognized error in this blog is the mention of irrigation system maintenance and monitoring irrigation times. As a contributor the the Residential Drip Irrigation Guideline by AMWUA, I have railed against a publication AMWUA calls Watering By The Numbers (WBTN). Their notion that trees should be fitted with 30 to 60 drip emitters SO THAT the desert tree can withstand 10 days between irrigation events is truly laughable. Arizona is unique, alright. Only in Arizona are the "conservationists" convinced that drip-micro irrigation isn't high frequency irrigation.
No more that 12 emitters are required for any ornamental or crop orchard tree in Arizona. Water application rates need only be 0.04 to 0.08 inches per hour, the run times need to be 10 hours in the peak use period, and irrigation runs 3 to 4 times each Summer week. That's how Arizona Department of Transportation does it, but WBTN clings to former University of Arizona icon, Dr. Jimmy Tipton, his take on this matter. Strange how one prominent irrigation equipment company, friend of the university in material ways, in Tucson, never really accepted drip-micro irrigation, which makes sense since they are biggest advocate of sprinkler irrigated turf. (Think "collapse of pork belly prices after WHO carcinogen announcement"). Another UofA researcher also decried any and all benefits of drip irrigation. This, like the promised miracles of level basin irrigation in Ag-, seems to refute the any notion of drip irrigation. It starts with proponents of "50 emitters to wet 50% of the mature canopy area (Radius: 30 feet), then added, "desert adapted tree roots extend several feet beyond the drip line", so you better add 20 or 30 more emitters for that space (Canopy radius: 40 feet). What you end up with is essentially surface irrigated trees, just like sprinklers! With that much water deposited, of course you could leave the system off for ten days. But it is totally wrongheaded thinking. Dr. Tipton, correct in nearly every other way, never adopted the esteemed irrigation expert from Netafim Ami Charitan who explained so well how small volumes stored per event only mean higher irrigation frequency; the trees adapt and rootzones (wetted onions) are much more efficient.
Trees that are grossly out of scale with the small front yards. Landscape architects are obliged to "design" these plant spaces so that they look nice from the first minute, adequately filled with green matter. Unfortunately, if you plant an evergreen elm where "it seemed nice" on day one as a 24" boxed tree, like 20 feet away from the front face of the home, the tree will be touching the house in 5 years, and look stupid in 10.
Also, many of the favorites "designed" into a property are profoundly messy, dropping huge amounts of litter regularly. Many are also very fast to spread by seed into places they do not belong. The common remedies are to spray them with contact or systemic herbicide. But worse yet, the litter is gathered by noisy leaf blowers that not only ruin many neighbor's peace and quiet contentedness, but these "maintenance professionals" flip litter over the block walls, littering other's spaces, while also wreaking havoc with community air quality. The EPA notices this and cites the counties for particulate pollution, and the landscape maintenance contractors drive away to their offices to submit their weekly invoices, oblivious to the damage they have done. Not sustainable. Far from wondrous.
As an independent irrigation adviser for decades in Arizona, probably the most unrecognized error in this blog is the mention of irrigation system maintenance and monitoring irrigation times. As a contributor the the Residential Drip Irrigation Guideline by AMWUA, I have railed against a publication AMWUA calls Watering By The Numbers (WBTN). Their notion that trees should be fitted with 30 to 60 drip emitters SO THAT the desert tree can withstand 10 days between irrigation events is truly laughable. Arizona is unique, alright. Only in Arizona are the "conservationists" convinced that drip-micro irrigation isn't high frequency irrigation.
No more that 12 emitters are required for any ornamental or crop orchard tree in Arizona. Water application rates need only be 0.04 to 0.08 inches per hour, the run times need to be 10 hours in the peak use period, and irrigation runs 3 to 4 times each Summer week. That's how Arizona Department of Transportation does it, but WBTN clings to former University of Arizona icon, Dr. Jimmy Tipton, his take on this matter. Strange how one prominent irrigation equipment company, friend of the university in material ways, in Tucson, never really accepted drip-micro irrigation, which makes sense since they are biggest advocate of sprinkler irrigated turf. (Think "collapse of pork belly prices after WHO carcinogen announcement"). Another UofA researcher also decried any and all benefits of drip irrigation. This, like the promised miracles of level basin irrigation in Ag-, seems to refute the any notion of drip irrigation. It starts with proponents of "50 emitters to wet 50% of the mature canopy area (Radius: 30 feet), then added, "desert adapted tree roots extend several feet beyond the drip line", so you better add 20 or 30 more emitters for that space (Canopy radius: 40 feet). What you end up with is essentially surface irrigated trees, just like sprinklers! With that much water deposited, of course you could leave the system off for ten days. But it is totally wrongheaded thinking. Dr. Tipton, correct in nearly every other way, never adopted the esteemed irrigation expert from Netafim Ami Charitan who explained so well how small volumes stored per event only mean higher irrigation frequency; the trees adapt and rootzones (wetted onions) are much more efficient.