Drip irrigation for an intensive orchard: layout and calculation

Orchard drip irrigation consists of a head unit with a pump and filter, mainlines and one drip line along each tree row. Specialist sources put an intensive apple orchard’s seasonal water use at 3,000–5,000 m³ per hectare, and on peak days Netafim plans for 5 mm a day, that is 50 m³/ha. Below are the row layout, a per-hectare flow calculation and fertigation rules. A contractor quotes the installation for your design.

What an orchard drip system consists of

An orchard drip system has five parts: a pump with a water source, a filter, a fertiliser injector, mainlines and drip lines. The table shows what each does and which benchmarks the sources give.

Irrigation is designed together with the trellis, because the line hangs on its bottom wire. The support is covered in trellis for an intensive apple orchard.

Row layout: line, drippers, distance from the trunk

An intensive orchard gets one drip line per tree row with drippers 0.5–0.75 m apart, as the Netafim apple protocol states. The line runs about 20 cm from the trunk. For young trees Netafim gives a first-year example: four 1 l/h drippers at the tree run 2.5 hours, or 10 l per tree a day.

The line hangs on the trellis bottom wire, as Ontario Apple Growers and the WSU guide (EM117E) advise. WSU spaces drippers 24 in (about 60 cm) apart at 0.5 gallons an hour (about 1.9 l/h). neo-agriservis names other options: the line on the soil, on the trellis, or buried 30–35 cm.

How much water apple on M9 needs

Specialist sources put an intensive orchard’s seasonal water at 3,000–5,000 m³ per hectare, so the water source and pump are sized before drippers are chosen. The table gives the norms from the manufacturer and trade publications.

Netafim calculates the application rate in mm/h as dripper flow times the number of lines, divided by dripper spacing times line spacing. Our example: a 1.6 l/h dripper, 0.6 m spacing, one line per row, 3.5 m rows. That gives 1.6 ÷ (0.6 × 3.5) ≈ 0.76 mm/h, so delivering 5 mm takes about 6.6 hours a day.

Hectare flow is then about 7.6 m³/h: 2,857 m of row holds about 4,760 drippers at 1.6 l/h. If every section of a 5 ha plot ran at once, the pump would need about 38 m³/h, so the orchard is split into sections watered in turn. The rate for your plot is set in the design from weather and soil.

Fertigation: when and how to feed

Fertigation delivers fertiliser with irrigation water. For M9, which is demanding on water and feed, it runs from early spring to midsummer and stops 1–1.5 months before harvest, as yug-poliv.ru states.

Netafim advises feeding with every irrigation or at least weekly, flushing the lines for at least 30 minutes afterwards, and stopping fertigation about 4 weeks before harvest. Composition and doses follow the soil analysis, whose timing is in intensive orchard planting by month.

Cost and installation order

The trade blog bozos.ru puts drip irrigation with fertigation at RUB 500,000–900,000 per hectare, 12–18% of orchard planting costs. The 2025 estimate is indicative. The nursery does not quote installation prices, and a contractor prepares the estimate from the plot design. The other cost lines are in how much a hectare of intensive orchard costs.

The order is simple: trellis and mainlines first, planting after. WSU requires the trellis before the trees, and the line is attached to it.

What the nursery does and what the contractor does

The Sady Stavropolya nursery does not sell or install drip irrigation. The design, installation and start-up are done by partner contractors we refer buyers to, or come inside turnkey orchard planting, with scope, price and regions given in a quote on request.

We supply apple saplings on M9 and advise on cultivars, rootstocks, layouts and planting dates. See apple on M9 on the apple page, rootstocks on the rootstocks page, trees per hectare in the sapling calculator, and secure a lot for your planting through pre-order.

Sources

• Netafim, “Apple protocol”
• Washington State University Extension, EM117E
• Ontario Apple Growers, “Building trellis support systems for high density orchards”
• neo-agriservis, “Drip irrigation of an apple orchard”
• yug-poliv.ru, core elements of orchard growing technology
• bozos.ru, “Basic principles of intensive orchard planting”
• bozos.ru, investment estimate for an intensive apple orchard, 2025
• Flow and runtime example: Sady Stavropolya calculation using the Netafim formula