Outdoor Grow: Using the tide for irrigation?

[five-o]

I have several Super Silver Haze seedlings that I am going to plant guerrilla style along the edges of a tidal pond. The flood is fresh water as it is off a tributary with pretty significant flow. The idea here is to have an absolute minimum ongoing maintenance. Set and almost forget...
Has anyone used the tide for twice daily irrigation, powered by the moon? Initial thoughts are to map the average tide height and plant them in a location that will see them wet their feet for an hour or so twice each day.

Thoughts?

 

[EastCoastGhost]

I’m thinking twice a day in soil will be way to much water. Marijuana likes a good wet/dry cycle, the soil has to dry up in order for the roots to get oxygen but I’m mostly a hydro guy so i don’t know a lot about soil so maybe someone else will chime in with thoughts

 

[Bud]

A Ebb and flow system is similar to what’s mentioned here. Uncontrollably of tides and moon faze extremes would cause me to rethink that. But first have u tested for water ph to see if feasible?

 

[Lowrider72]

Tide comes from the ocean, just because its a river tributary doesnt make it fresh water.
Id test for ppm for salt levels

 

[five-o]

Pretty confident it is entirely fresh. We are 40 km from the salt and up a trib another few km's. The feed channel to the pond intakes from the top few feet of the river. Even if some salt were present, it would be on the bottom of the river. We are not close enough to the ocean to have a brackish mix. Haven't checked ph, but that is easily done...

ECG makes a good point with drainage and O2 to the roots. I may plant one every few feet away from the edge to determine the sweet spot for proper drainage. Likely where the natural flora is most lush.

Good experiment though. Ancient civilizations used to do tidal irrigation.

 

[DeanWest89]

Yeah you would have to have it in a big root pouch and have it so only the bottom 3” -5 inches get wet but anything more then 15 mins would be ways too much 2 times a day especially when the plant is small , but I may be wrong .

 

[TurboBucket]

Very cool idea. Sounds like you have a very unique geographic position to play with.

As mentioned it's really similar to an ebb and flow system the key would be having a medium and container size that would allow enough water content without suffocating the plants in the interim.

Going from seed may be difficult for a set and forget type grow. But if you transplanted a plant with an established root system into maybe a 20-40 liter fabric pot of soilless medium like peat moss(pro-mix) coco or Coco/perlite I think it would be able to grow an adequate root system to sustain itself in the relatively regular irrigation cycles of the tides. The Coco holds a large quantity of water but also a good deal of oxygen with it allowing the root system to cope with the long flood times.

As far as nutrients go I wouldn't use anything synthetic. The runoff/leeching will go directly into the water source which is undesirable. A good compost would provide lots of fuel for some outdoor ladies though.

Pro mix hp can be amended with organic supplements like earth worm castings or compost and some additional aeration perlite/pumice/possibly Coco or Coco croutons that should be able to make a mix that would keep the plants happy enough.

 

[five-o]

Update... I haven't been able to get to the site in several weeks. Seems I missed a major consideration. Spring Freshet! As the mountains warm, the rivers swell and the waterline has been very high... the three plants I put down at the tides edge have been submerged pretty much continuously... I fear they are lost.

Perhaps next season I will wait till the melt-water abates and raise them in pots until a mid to late June transplant...

So - don't try this at home kids...

Luckily I held back several seedlings and have them in pots out on the farm...