bamboo irrigation

I always have people dropping off bamboo at my house when they cut it. so i have quite a surplus. I was wondering if anyone out there has or has done bamboo irrigation. Or just using it to move water around from one place to another. photos would be great but simple knowledge is best.

We have extremely dry summers, and until my soil humus levels are deep and up to what they need to be ( and its getting there but) for now I need to water a few times during the summer. I have been messing around with some bigger ones split in half as i have seen when searching on google. Which i can see some advantages of possible evaporative cooling when running through the forest garden. Though i am wondering if it can be done by cutting the ends properly and plugging the point end of one into the fat end of another.

of course this would be more of a temporary thing, 2-4 years hopefully. Its still the rainy season here so i have time to tinker.

I suppose you could use one to plug the next, as long as the seal is tight enough. Maybe you could find a fiber that would work as a gasket. I would think that the seal would have to be real tight, or you may lose all your water (silicone with the fiber may be a good idea). What if you bought an electrician's wire chasing bit (like a 4' or more) in the biggest diameter possible, and ran that from each end of a pole? That would give you about 8' lengths of covered pipe, and fewer joints.

When I googled bamboo irrigation, most of the photos were of the split type. I would think that splitting the bamboo may be faster, but I could be wrong.

I would run a string line at an appropriate incline and use smaller pieces of bamboo lashed in either a tripod or bipod as the support system....as this is what I see in photos, so it must be working!

I just had a thought...with a router (or even better a router table) you could cut a nice wide slot, maybe 1/2-3/4", along the top of the bamboo and use a real sharp flat chisel to cut out each partition. This way the water would be a bit more protected, and it may keep leaves from clogging it.

yea for the time being i have been splitting it and doing it that way. cutting notches out the side for equivalent of drip emitters. by the time the water gets to the end of the system it barely has just enough water for the last few emitters which is good. I think that there is a better design to be setup though.

for people who grow in rows this would be a lot easier, for forest gardens i have to soak the soil heavily once every few weeks.

as for the end to end method. i dont think it matters if it leaks a little. at least in the application i would use it in. i would just plant something there. as long as the whole bamboo system gets the same amount of water.

i will keep tinkering with it and update results when i remember.

Wondering about treating the bamboo so it will endure hot summers?

I've built a small prototype that I hope to replicate over many rows of crops. Problem- Since harvesting and cutting the bamboo, as seen in  the video, it has  really dried out and i'm  afraid will soon begin to degrade. Any advice for a beginner bamboo worker? 

ive been working with this more and im back to the same conclusion. this works good for a regular, row or raised bed garden because of the straight lines. it is extremely hard in a forest garden system to wet the entire area, there would need to be bamboo all over the place. back to building soil and rainwaterharvesting

it helps a lot if you split the bamboo first when wet, and use the halves as the water distribution. this way when it dries out it wont split on a line that you don't want.

Ignorant question; are you drying the bamboo before you use it for watering?
I saw an interesting variation on an olla that might work with bamboo -- these were done with (3 inch diameter?) plastic pipe. The ends are closed, small holes are  drilled in the sides of the pipe and the pipe is buried like a fence post a foot or more deep. These were about 3 feet tall. Fill with water for a slow drip, the ones I saw being used for tomatoes. You could tie the tomatoes to the waterers if you wanted to work that hard
Gani

I would love to see pics, as I do not understand how the water passes the knots of the culms.
Do you have to cut it? I read only that you split the bamboo...

About wetting the entire forest area... why?
I can tell you what I saw here, a VERY dry summer place: some trees are watered all the time at ONE point.
I can see the advantage: one entrance of water into the ground = less evaporation.
We might be able to do this because the soil is sandy and stoney. So water can spread, I suppose.

So I have planned to do something like what gani tells about. First I will use plastic pipes, and then bamboo when my own will grow...
I have also planned to try to dig one hole per tree, and fill it with stones. Then I will put the drip only there.
I want water to stay underground.

I have read that plants develop more roots where water is available, and the only mistake would be to water all the time in a different place.

Sorry I'm not doing this anymore, way too much hassle.

The reason I want to wet whole areas is because I'm not just growing a tree. It's a full forest garden with many layers. Watering only one spot will lead to dying plants at this stage. My soil is not built enough to go without irrigation for five months and no rain.

Im having much better luck with subterranean flood irrigation.

Jordan Lowery wrote:Im having much better luck with subterranean flood irrigation.

That is exactly what I want to do, i do not want the water to stay superficial and evaporate.
Have you done a topic about it?

Xisca Nicolas wrote:

Jordan Lowery wrote:Im having much better luck with subterranean flood irrigation.

That is exactly what I want to do, i do not want the water to stay superficial and evaporate.
Have you done a topic about it?

Yeah this is the only result google is pulling for me for the search term "subterranean flood irrigation" and using any other possible term than the full one in quotes brings up a ton of crap about subterranean drip irrigation.

Any links or discussion on the subject would be much appreciated.

"subterranean flood irrigation" - ? Do you mean water wicking beds? Or subsurface drip irrigation? Or perhaps flood and drain aquaponics? Either way, the thing that attracts me to the bamboo drip irrigation is the fact that it can be done by any community without any outside external intervention or monetary aid (usually based on debt...). It is a great example of a low tech solution. Sure it won't be applicable in all circumstances, but I don't believe that anything is.

I could use some help understanding "subterranean flood irrigation". Not intuitively obvious