How to Cut Water Use in Half

Of all the romantic, descriptive place names in the US one to remember is Chinook, Washington. Yep, Chinook as in salmon, population 400, maybe 450 "if you count the dogs and cats, "says Julie Rhoads.

AS a matter of fact, the climate in Chinook area has a lot in common with areas of the East Coast, from Massachusetts to New Jersey. Both coasts are where they grow cranberries.

Julie and David Rhoads are cranberry growers, operating Cran-A-Weyl Farm. Weyl is the last name of Julie's dad, who operated the farm for 30 years before they took it over five years ago. AS farms go, particularly in the West, there "spread" is minuscule, only 12 acres--and that reflects four new acres added three years ago. Yet they are one of the larger cranberry growers in the area in terms of production.

Everything about growing cranberries is different, most especially in the terminology. For instance, they are said to grow in bogs, but a cranberry bog is not a bog in the sense of swamp. It is a piece of flat land, ditched for irrigation, on which the cranberry vines grow. Again it is not vines in the sense of grapes or vineyards. The cranberries grown on an evergreen vine (dark green in summer, reddish brown in winter) that hugs the ground. Plants send out runners of six feet or more, which intertwine, eventually creating a mat of interlocking vines six or eight inches high. Some bogs area hundred years old. That is a mat indeed.

Nobody can walk in the bog, so how are the berries picked? Julie Rhoads explains: "The berries grow on a twig called an upright, each bearing four or five berries. A typical bog will contain lots and lots of uprights. Harvesting occurs in October. The bog is flooded to several inches, then we bring in a beater. It is sort of like a giant egg beater with rotating bars that knocks the berries off. Next we flood the bog until the vines are covered. The berries float to the top and we corral them into one end. It is very pretty, a sea of red."

The berries are loaded into boxes and trucked to the cannery. In the case of Julie and Dave that means Ocean Spray. She referred to boxes, yet production is measured in barrels--just like petroleum.

IN 1998 Cran-A-Weyl Farm had a record year, over 300 bushes of berries per acre. "That made us the top grower on the Long Beach Peninsula. This year the crop is down to 175-200 bushes per acre. We blame it on the weather, a very cold spring and a cool summer. It couldn't seem to get warm."

But something else contributed to the bumper crop in 1998 and may have helped make the 1999 crop as good as it was, given the weather. Two years ago Julie and Dave invested in Soilmoisture tensiometers.

"An Ocean Spray representative mentioned tensiometers to us. Then Megan Bryan (a Soilmoisture representative) explained their use at a growers meeting. We bought a couple of tensiometers and have not been sorry.

"The first year we cut our water use in half. We were simply overwatering. With the tensiometers we discovered that about an inch of water per week during the growing season (June to October) was plenty. And we had been giving two inches."

The watering Julie talks about is not the flooding during harvesting. Cranberries need water during growing season, usually June to October. Julie says, "Berries don't like it too hot. They can burn in the sun. So we turn on the sprinklers when the temperature reaches 80 degrees or so. In Massachusetts the berries withstand 95-degree temperatures. I can't explain why that is so."

The use of tensiometers by Julie and Dave not only drastically cut the costs of water but led to that bumper crop the first year.

How is it possible to cut water use in half and get a bumper crop? Herb Fancher, then sales manager for Soilmoisture Equipment Corp. explains: "Not everyone will get the savings that Julie and Dave Rhoads did. But numerous customers, growing everything from trees to flowers, report substantial savings in water use and better yields with use of tensiometers.

"This occurs because the easy-to-use, low cost tensiometer measures the tension of water held underground, registering it on a dial from 0 to 100. Low numbers mean there is too much water, potentially damaging to the roots. High numbers mean the roots are starved for water, leading to wilting and death. The tensiometers are left in place, permitting a daily, even hourly gauge of whether water is needed and how much."

In their lifetime Julie and Dave have witnessed the growing popularity of cranberries, particularly juice, in everything from highballs to candy. "You know how it goes," Julie says, "when some crop catches on, everybody tries to get in the act. The result has been a surplus of berries and a collapse in prices. That is only predictable."

With their 35-year-old bogs, Julie and Dave Rhoads expect to weather the storm and enjoy the cranberry business in rugged, picturesque Chinook, Washington (pop.400) for a long time.