Water Requirements

[ahosey01]

Hey everyone,

Hoping someone can help me figure out some guidelines - I'm putting in an irrigation system and I want to decide how much water to give each palm every week.  I will have three zones.  Here is my species list, broken out by genus:

Phoenix

• Phoenix canariensis
• Phoenix acaulis
• Phoenix pusilla
• Phoenix reclinata
• Phoenix sylvestris
• Phoenix theophrasti

Sabal

• Sabal etonia
• Sabal 'lisa'
• Sabal causiarum
• Sabal palmetto
• Sabal uresana

Bismarckia

• Bismarckia nobilis

Nannorrhops

• Nannorrhops ritchiana

Washingtonia

• Washingtonia filifera

Brahea

• Brahea armata

Rhapis

• Rhapis excelsa

I don't even know where to start here - can anyone help me figure out how much to irrigate these each week?

Edited March 1, 2021 by ahosey01

[Allen]

Drip or what type of irrigation?  

[ahosey01]

1 hour ago, Allen said:

Drip or what type of irrigation?  

Yeah, drip.

My soil is like a clay-ish loam with silt mixed in.  It's heavy but it drains fairly well.  A foot deep hole, pre-saturated, will drain in under an hour.

My thought is to put 30-40 gallons on the root ball of the majority of the palms 2x a week, over a long period to ensure penetration.  For example, 2 x 2gph emitters per palm, running for 10 hours, twice a week in the summer.  Particularly where that palm grows either on the banks of rivers or near high groundwater (i.e. Phoenix theophrasti). 

For the ones that don't grow that way in habitat - instead growing on hillsides or where inundation is more seasonal) I'd run 2 x 2gph emitters once a week for closer to 12 hours.  Palms that fit this bill in my eyes are Phoenix acaulis, Brahea armata, Nannorrhops ritchiana and potentially - if I get one - a Phoenix rupicola.

Does this seem reasonable?  I could be approaching this all wrong.  To this point, I just hand water and keep track of the frequency, soil requirements, soil moisture, etc.  Keep in mind, summer temps are typically 103-106 where I'm at, and 115-118 are common a few times a year.

Adam

Edited March 2, 2021 by ahosey01

[Allen]

Someone else will have to chime in on your area that uses drip.  Also I am not familiar with watering all the palms you mention but....My drip system may be different than yours.  here is what I do.   I have clay loam and use all 1 gph emitters.  Your palms may be much larger than mine!!!!  I only have relatively small palms under 10'.  For small palms under 3-4' I use 1-1gph emitter at base.  All my larger palms have roots in a roughly 18" distance from the trunk so on larger trunked palms I run a "drip line" off the main line that circles the palm and has a emitter 9 or 12 inches already spaced so each palm may have 5-8 emitters.  My landscape is well mulched and I run mine 2-3 times/week for 1 hour or daily when summer really hits and it's dry.  The main point is increase the amount of drippers per plant for larger/water hungry palms.  Mine are hooked up to a irrigation controller called rainmachine so I can run it on my phone and it is weather tailored.  

[ahosey01]

7 hours ago, Allen said:

Someone else will have to chime in on your area that uses drip.  Also I am not familiar with watering all the palms you mention but....My drip system may be different than yours.  here is what I do.   I have clay loam and use all 1 gph emitters.  Your palms may be much larger than mine!!!!  I only have relatively small palms under 10'.  For small palms under 3-4' I use 1-1gph emitter at base.  All my larger palms have roots in a roughly 18" distance from the trunk so on larger trunked palms I run a "drip line" off the main line that circles the palm and has a emitter 9 or 12 inches already spaced so each palm may have 5-8 emitters.  My landscape is well mulched and I run mine 2-3 times/week for 1 hour or daily when summer really hits and it's dry.  The main point is increase the amount of drippers per plant for larger/water hungry palms.  Mine are hooked up to a irrigation controller called rainmachine so I can run it on my phone and it is weather tailored.  

So I have to assume that my smaller palms won’t use all the water I give, and that much of it will be out of reach of the root zone.  The point in those cases as I see it will be to keep the ground soft and prevent compaction so the roots can spread out effectively through soft soil, and also to keep the moisture up generally.  They might only use a gallon or something.  I have some big palms and some small ones and some medium size ones.

My thought it to put the same amount of water in the soil over the same area regardless of the size of the palm.  Like I said - my thought is that it should give the roots a nice area in which to expand.

Yard is mulched but our temperatures are off the charts in summer and last summer we didn’t even get a single drop of rain or a day of cloud cover for almost nine months.

This could certainly be too much, but the 30-40 gallons in the root zone thing came from a paper I found from the AZ department of Ag saying that 30-40 should be the target for most palms and more for trees.

Edited March 2, 2021 by ahosey01

[sonoranfans]

15 hours ago, ahosey01 said:

Hey everyone,

Hoping someone can help me figure out some guidelines - I'm putting in an irrigation system and I want to decide how much water to give each palm every week.  I will have three zones.  Here is my species list, broken out by genus:

Phoenix

• Phoenix canariensis
• Phoenix acaulis
• Phoenix pusilla
• Phoenix reclinata
• Phoenix sylvestris
• Phoenix theophrasti

Sabal

• Sabal etonia
• Sabal 'lisa'
• Sabal causiarum
• Sabal palmetto
• Sabal uresana

Bismarckia

• Bismarckia nobilis

Nannorrhops

• Nannorrhops ritchiana

Washingtonia

• Washingtonia filifera

Brahea

• Brahea armata

Rhapis

• Rhapis excelsa

I don't even know where to start here - can anyone help me figure out how much to irrigate these each week?

I see you are in arizona.  You shoud talk to locals as its a very different environment than california or florida.  I think there is an AZ thread on this forum, I wouldsend messages or ask on that thread what they have done.  When I was in arizona advice from other states was pretty much useless.  the 110F 6% RH in spring/early summer is something very few have ever experienced, let alone grown palms in.  

[Merlyn]

I'd agree with Tom on that, my recommendations on drippers would be random guesses for AZ weather.  We get 50-80 inches of rain here per year, most of it is in the humid summer with a 75 degree dewpoint.  So my system is set up for purely supplemental, to make sure nothing really 100% dries out during droughts.  I could probably shut off my drippers from June-October and it would all grow about the same. 

I use a pair of 1gph drippers for each large palm like a Phoenix Sylvestris or Canariensis.  A small Rhapis cluster in sun gets a single 1gph, a cluster in shade gets a single 0.5 gph dripper, for 30 minutes per day.  So that Sylvestris I am only giving it about 1gph * 2 drippers * 0.5 hours = 1 gallon of water.  That's not much, but in swampy FL it's working fine.

If you are currently watering by hand with a hose, just measure it out and find out what you are currently using.  Water one palm by hand, count the number of seconds you are doing that palm, then fill up a 5 gallon bucket for the same number of seconds.  That'll give you a ballpark estimate on gallons.  Then just calculate drippers (or bubblers, or small fan sprayers) to duplicate the total gallons per palm.  It takes a while to fill up a 5 gallon bucket from a hose, so I'd be surprised if you were currently putting 30-40 gallons on each palm.

[sonoranfans]

AHosey, in arizona I used to use 2 gph drippers because anything smaller would clog.  With such high evaporation rates, the hardness coats out on the dripper tip.  I ran them for 4-5 hrs overnight in my clayish soil with granite topping(a must), and placed them around the tree with numbers(2-4) and distance from the trunk depending on the size of the tree.  I also planted things like queens in bunches with sabals close nearby so they shared drippers, it was more efficient.   Brahea armatas should be planted in full sun with up to 4 drippers per palm(some of mine were grown from 15 gallon to 11' overall).  3x a week , minimum in 105+ heat, 2x in winter.  But you should talk to locals like forum members AZ tropic and Rod Anderson if they answer their messaging, ask for a visit and see what these guys have done in 20+ years of palm growing int he desert.  And yes no drip irrigation and many palms will die.  Hand watering wont cut it there.