Jerel

We have been irrigating with high salt water for 4 years. It has been a prolonged drought. The salt levels in the bores kept climbing with the drought. We have seen a gradual decline in tree health.

We installed magnets (Phion) on most of the bores. We also have one structuring the water in the main dam. The electrical charge of the water dropped, which is meant to mean that the water has been structured.

We have also added biology (lactobacillus and native microbes) to the dam water which has also helped.

As the whole orchard is treated the same there is no way of really knowing whether it has worked.

Sodium is no longer an issue. We have managed to drop that out. However the trees are still struggling with chloride.

We are now going to install a Hydrosmart. This has the water passing through three electrical fields each over about 1.7m. It has to be the diameter of the main, which in our case is 250mm. There will be up to 140,000 litres per hour going through it. We have been assured it is more effective than the magnets, largely due to the extended period in which the water is passing through the electrical field.

We have also just had our first decent rainfall events (200mm) in years so we have dams full of clean water, so we won’t be dealing with salt this year.

We are also putting down deeper bores into fractures chasing clean “primary” water.

Hopefully with all of this our water quality issues are behind us.