Recipes for success

Proper nutrition and irrigation in greenhouse crops are key. But many factors can create mishaps and complicate growers’ ability to provide accurate water and fertilizer feeds to annuals and perennials.

That’s why Argus Controls developed its Multi-Feed RM (rack mount) injector — part of its complete fertigation management system — to offer pressurized in-line injection and manages dilute tank hydroponic nutrient solutions.

Depending on your requirements, a multi-feed system can provide anything from a single-tank formulation to many separate fertilizer recipes and feed strengths on the same irrigation system.

Growers can configure feed recipes from stock concentrates that are connected to the injector. In a single irrigation system, the Multi-Feed RM can support as many as 64 recipes.

Since the injection software controls each metering valve separately, many styles of injection can be accomplished including single-tank, A/B style dosing, and full single element dosing (where separate tanks are used for each fertilizer salt).

While the Multi-Feed RM can inject acids, bases and fertilizer recipes, it can also provide chemigation treatments to irrigation lines or inject nematodes and other organic materials, says Argus Controls Senior Technician Jeff Neff.

Argus Titan controllers, which manage irrigation systems, can operate the Multi-Feed RM.

The injector tracks EC and pH targets for each recipe for quality assurance, alarm monitoring and correcting automatic feed strengths.

With Argus 'Feed Forward' intelligence, precision dosing is achieved at all design flow rates without the striping inaccuracies, settling times and feedback loop oscillations that can plague other injection strategies.

The fertigation management system that supports Multi-Feed RM

The Multi-Feed RM is just one aspect of a total fertigation management system for growers, which can be custom-configured to meet their needs. Growers can control the RM alongside other irrigation equipment such as zone valves, watering booms and flood benches and floors.

Both frequency and volume for watering are adjustable with the Multi-Feed RM and larger fertigation management system. Watering frequency is based on feedback from multiple components, including moisture sensors, manual watering and feeding, and evapotranspiration and light watering models.

Argus Controls offers time- and volume-based options to ensure accuracy of watering volume. The system can provide pulsed application to reduce nutrient runoff and automatically adjust to match the drain rate.