Water. The key to life, and arguably one of the most essential parts of any garden. It also can be one of the most frustrating and time-consuming aspects of gardening. I love my new DIY raised garden beds. What I do not love is keeping them watered all summer long.
Ive been wanting to install drip irrigation for ages now but kept putting it off because I had no idea where to begin. Every time I browsed the drip irrigation aisle, I would get so overwhelmed with all the bits and pieces. Its like buying your own custom lego set only you have to figure out what you need. But maybe it doesnt need to be complicated. There are many ways to improve garden irrigation that save time, energy, and water.
Why drip irrigation? Reduce hands-on watering time. Can schedule watering with a timer. Delivers water deep into the soil. Prevents leaves from getting wet. Set it up once and use for years. After having a watering system set up in my garden, I can never go back.
The first thing you want to do is draw out a map of your garden, and mark out all the plants you want watered. Highlight your garden beds, pots and any trees you want watered. Start with the bed closest to the water source. If you have multiple rows of beds, you will want to run the line down one side of the bed to connect the rows. Since your water is pressurized coming from the hose, you can easily water a lot of beds on one line.
Then consider how you would like it watered. There are two common ways of watering when setting up drip irrigation which Ill be focusing on. The first way is using drip tube, and the second way is using shrubblers. Drip tube is a hose-like tube that has holes pre-punched into it every 30cms allowing it to deliver drips of water. These are great to use in raised garden beds where you want to pretty much water the entire bed. Barbed shrubblers are like mini sprinkler heads that are attached to a spike, so that they sit above the soil level and emit water from them like a small sprinkler. This is a great option for pots, or for putting next to specific plants that you know will be permanently in that spot.
In order to get the water out of the tubing and to the plants, we need to add the 1/4? drip lines. There is an emitter every so often that releases water in a slow drip. Perfect for watering deep into the soil. You can get dripline with emitters every 6?, 9? or 12? along the tube. For my 4×8 beds I add 4 lines evenly spaced.
Its important to have a plan before you start laying tubing in the bed because you want to know where the water will come into the bed. Make sure to press the tubing all the way inside the compression fittings. That is what holds them in place. The tubing comes rolled up in a coil. You will want to straighten it out as much as you can to make laying it out in the bed easier. If it is a hot day, the sun will help to soften it so it will stay straight faster.
Once you determine where your drip tube and shrubblers will go to water your plants, its time to determine how you can then connect these parts to your tap using poly pipe. Poly pipe does not have holes and is used to connect your tap to your drip tube or shrubblers. The larger the poly pipe, the more water that can flow through it, so choosing the size depends on your water pressure and how much garden you want to water.
If you have a large number of plants to water, then consider dividing your watering into various zones. This helps keep the water pressure high enough so that water can flow through your drip irrigation system properly and water every single plant from the start of the drip line to the end of the drip line.
Before attaching it to the spigot or hose, I also recommend a pressure reducer. This will help prevent your drip lines and tubing from blowing out due to high water pressure. You can also attach a filter and or a timer to the line before attaching it to the water source. Water comes on at the time and duration you set the timer for.
Some people love watering by hand. I do find it therapeutic and enjoyable, when I have the time to enjoy it. But that is rare these days. For folks with just one or two raised beds, or a handful of potted plants, hand-watering is often times still a very manageable and the most affordable option. But as the garden grows, our old methods just werent cutting it.
Our goal is to use less time and less water, and keep the system simple and effective. With a drip irrigation system in place, all I have to do is regularly check the plants to see if I need to increase or decrease the water they are getting. Then sit back and let the system do the hard work.
Once it is set up, your raised garden beds can be watered all summer long with very little effort on your part. Even without a timer, you only need to attach the hose to the spigot and turn it on. You can set a reminder on your phone to turn it off, and the watering is done.
It will not be an extremely straightforward, one method suits all type of thing though. Each climate, garden space, and even plant type may have different irrigation needs. Youll start to notice a pattern and get your own schedule down, suited for your climate, season, sun exposure, mulching practices, and type of garden you have.
Maybe some of these garden irrigation solutions wont work for you. But maybe many of them will. The best way for me to be successful in the garden is to set up a drip irrigation system. That way, even when I am busy, the garden gets the water it needs.