Ornamental nursery in Poland has been developing vary well in the resent years. It is the most success sector within floriculture or even in horticulture at all. Area of production grew up to 6747 ha and the value of production in 2011 was animated on 1 billion PLN. Irrigation is one of the most important factors with great importance on production. Therefore it is important to optimize the ways of using water resources in the process of nursery development. It should be related to not only modern and economical irrigation systems but also with the introduction of rational criteria of irrigation plants grown in the field and containers. Optimizing of watering plants in nursery, using the systems that save water and money should be more important since then. The aim of the study based on questionnaire and authors on visits in the nurseries was to estimate watering systems in nurseries, source of water and amount of water used for irrigation according to holding size, localization and association in producers organizations. In the study 612 holdings were examined mostly by the e-mail survey, but some of them also by authors own visits what was very valuable for this research. Area of ...
Poland has one of the smallest fresh water resources in Europe. Due to variability of Polish climate, irrigation became an indispensable element of intensive horticultural production. Recent study has shown that Polish farmers do not use any criteria to estimate plant water requirements for controlling irrigation, which leads to waste of water and energy. This is because userfriendly technologies enabling rational use of water resources are not easily available. The objective of the project is to develop an effective system for control of irrigation in ornamental nurseries, based on measurements of plant parameters, soil conditions and climatic data. To realize this approache the crop coefficient (k) for several important nursery species should be determined. Also the method of restricted irrigation (Regulated Deficit Irrigation - RDI) to control plant shape and plant quality will be tested on several important nursery cultivars. Additionally quantitative and qualitative evaluation of drainage water originated from container ornamental nurseries will be performed. The technology developed within the project will become the key element of the strategy of rational plant irrigation in ornamental nurseries. This is novel, hitherto not implemented approach to the problem of rational irrigation water use in plant production ...
The increasing role of perennials in ornamental nurseries requires the elaboration of efficient and accurate irrigation control of this specific group of plants. The experiment was conducted in 2015 in Research Institute of Horticulture, in Skierniewice. The aim of the study was to determine the water requirements and designate the specific evapotranspiration crop coefficient Kc of several perennials, commonly grown in Polish ornamental nurseries. Water requirements of perennials were evaluated using weighing lysimeters. At the same time the recorded climate parameters allowed to calculate the potential evapotranspiration (ET0). Lysimeter measurements and meteorological data allowed determine specific to each species crop coefficient (Kc). The Kc values were determined by dividing ETc by ET0. The obtained results showed that irrespectively of plant growth phase there is strong correlation between climate parameters and real crop evapotranspiration (ETc) of six evaluated perennials: Anemone hupehensis 'Prinz Heinrich', Echinacea purpurea ‘Guava Ice', Hemerocallis, ‘Sandra Elisabeth', Salvia nemorosa ‘Mainacht' and Veronica spicata ‘Royal Candles Glory'. The Kc coefficients of all species were changed during the growth season and increased according to plant development and percentage of ground coverage of soil in the lysimeter by leaves. The strong, positive correlation was shown for daily and hourly ...
