Webinar – An Introduction to Small-scale Irrigation with Pete Dollimore – Recorded Tuesday 18th April 2023

Date Published: 29th March 2023

Join Pete Dollimore as he talks us through his updated guide to irrigation for small-scale growers. The guide gives an overview of the commonly used installations with details of concepts, terminology, equipment, design and some related aspects to consider.  It will also provide tools and techniques to help growers estimate how much and when to water their crops. It will cover rainwater harvesting, water tanks, boreholes, reservoirs, using river water, mains water and tractors and show how these elements can be incorporated into a farm irrigation system. It also covers fixtures, fittings, and techniques for determining how much water crops need. 

We understand small-scale growers as those who would generally do cultivating and planting by hand and only use a tractor occasionally. Whilst this series of webinars will touch on equipment that might be relevant for larger growers, it is really aimed at small-scale growers who might be farming 1-2 hectares. 

Pete Dollimore was formerly Director and Chief Grower at Hankham Organics, which has a 7000 m2 glasshouse at the core of a social enterprise supplying 500+ businesses and homes with vegetables and fruit each week. He studied Environmental Science at Aberystwyth University in Wales, is passionate about biological control, and writes and speaks nationally on the subject of organic growing. He now works at The Montessori Place, a school in Sussex, guiding the young people’s work developing a horticultural business centred around the school’s 1-acre-walled garden.

This webinar will be followed by two more sessions – another webinar next week looking at how this all actually works in practice and hearing from three experienced growers about the installations they have known and loved. There will be a further closed session the day after, limited to i participants on Wednesday 26th, where participants can submit their irrigation issues and get bespoke answers from these irrigation experts.

Download the guide – click on image below

Watch Part Two, Question and Answer Session

Other irrigation webinars:

Tuesday 25th April 2023 – “Real life Irrigation Stories”

Wednesday 26th April 2023 “Growers Question Time: Your Irrigation problems solved“