Crops
Crop Irrigation in Kenya
The crop is where irrigation design starts: its spacing sets the emitter spacing, its water demand sets the flow, and its sensitivities (waterlogging, salinity, dry spells) set the schedule. Choose your crop for the full drip setup.
Field vegetables
Vegetable crops on drip
Tomatoes
Two lines per bed, fertigation as standard, long cycles — Kenya's flagship drip crop, in field and greenhouse.
Tomato setup →Onions
Dense in-row spacing, three lines per bed, drip tape's home crop — and the most clogging-prone, so filtration matters most here.
Onion setup →Cabbage
Consistent moisture through head formation, short-to-medium cycles, one or two lines per bed.
Cabbage setup →Kale
The highland staple: continuous harvest, steady supply, a workhorse crop for small and medium farms.
Kale setup →Capsicum
Multi-harvest over many months — drip keeps the long season consistent, with fertigation for the feed.
Capsicum setup →Chilli
Longer cycles than most vegetables, spacing between 60–90cm, steady supply through the flowering season.
Chilli setup →Cucumber
A heavy drinker with a high fertiliser bill — drip plus fertigation, in field or on vertical greenhouse systems.
Cucumber setup →Watermelon
Wide spacing, one line between rows, and the crop where drip pays off hardest in the dry counties.
Watermelon setup →French Beans
Long multi-harvest season on consistent moisture — drip keeps the picking coming through the dry spells.
French beans setup →Fruit & orchard crops
Trees, vines and specialty crops
Avocado
Kenya's export headline: lines per tree by age, careful scheduling, and the waterlogging line you must never cross.
Avocado setup →Mango
Bigger volume than avocado, fruit quality riding on consistent supply — multi-line drip at the canopy radius.
Mango setup →Banana
A heavy drinker among trees: 2–4 lines per pit, serious fertigation, and no room to underdesign.
Banana setup →Passion Fruit
Trellis crop on 2.5–3m spacing: two lines per vine row, and water stress at flowering is where yield is lost.
Passion fruit setup →Citrus
Orange, mandarin, lemon, grapefruit — steady moderate demand, multi-line drip, and feeding matched to the flushes.
Citrus setup →Coffee
The highland perennial: 1–2 lines at the root zone, the flowering and bean-fill windows that decide the harvest, and the waterlogging line.
Coffee setup →Strawberries
Beds, 10–15cm tape spacing, and the highest uniformity standard on the list — a dry row is a dead row.
Strawberry setup →How to use these pages
Each crop page gives the drip setup for that crop: typical spacing, lines per bed, emitter choice, scheduling logic and the mistakes that crop most often gets wrong. The numbers are standard starting points for common varieties — the design confirms them against your actual variety, bed layout and soil. For the system-wide view, start with the drip irrigation guide.