When DanRoses took over an older nursery in Midtfyn four years ago, seven fertilizer mixers from the 1980s were responsible for all irrigation in production. But due to instability and errors, the irrigation was always controlled manually by the gardeners. Now the seven old mixers have been replaced with three new ones for much better results – and peace of mind.
Since the 1980s, seven AMI 900s and AMI 90s have been watering the 25,000 m2 indoor rose production at the Danish nursery DanRoses. However, in recent years, the gardeners began to manually control all watering during the day due to uncertainty about the performance of the fertilizer mixer and whether the valves were even opening as expected.
“Some mornings we would discover that the night’s watering hadn’t even started, and then we knew that we wouldn’t be able to catch up with the watering before we had to pack the roses in our packing house. This resulted in losses,” says Lars Olsen, who is responsible for day-to-day management, production and sales at DanRoses.
Since then, the seven old mixers have been replaced with three new AMI Penta from DGT by Senmatic and the system no longer requires human control.
“Now we know that irrigation is done as expected with the correct dosage of fertilizer. I can drive to work with more peace of mind and we experience less waste in our production.”
Lars Olsen Production and Sales Manager
Watering reduced from 12 hours to just 2.5 hours daily
The old mixers had an active watering time of 12 hours every single day. A pump could only control one irrigation valve at a time and watering took as much as 40 minutes per valve.
With AMI Penta’s, active watering time is reduced to 2.5 hours, watering three valves simultaneously – in just 20 minutes.
“We used to spend hours on watering. The old pumps were unstable, we didn’t know for sure if the fertilizer dosage was correct and we had to check everything manually. That time is now freed up for other tasks – and we even save fertilizer due to precise dosing. It’s much more efficient.”
Lars Olsen Production and Sales Manager
AMI Penta: Even greater focus on precise fertilization
DGT by Senmatics AMI Penta is designed to put even more focus on the plants’ need for precise fertilization and correct acidity of the irrigation water at just the right time.
AMI Penta can control up to 100 groups with individual starting conditions. For each group, you can choose from 20 different recipes that include information on EC, pH and fertilizer mix. Each group can control up to 30 valves, which can be freely selected from the 200 valves available in the mixer. Up to 9 valves can water simultaneously, allowing maximum utilization of the pump capacity. Watering time and volume can be set individually for each valve.
