Keeping lines clean, whether a golf course sprinkler system, or drip irrigation line, is all associated with TDS/EC, biology, water temperature, water flow, and stagnation (enhanced water flow flushed the organisms, stagnation aids the organisms to reproduce). All of this is followed by two more consequences; the organisms forming impenetrable biofilms that are resistant to acids and disinfectants like chloride, and evaporative salts (the scale you see formed when water, containing any TDS or EC, evaporates to dryness).

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Let’s take this a step further and think about the fate of the cleaners in our soils. As we move these elements, minerals, metals, microbes and bio-films from the water and from the lines, are they, and the chemistry we used beneficial or detrimental to the soil from which our plants are drinking from, and beneficial or detrimental for the plant itself?

Bringing this full circle, plants are what they drink! The most soluble elements in water and soil can also be the most toxic; sodium, chloride, sulfur and sulfate where there is sufficient bacteria liberating hydrogen sulfide gasses and the toxic sulfate reducing bacteria and the bio-films – polysaccharides, which also block oxygen flow and shields nutritional uptake, even odium and dissolved oxygen at the root zones.