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Drip irrigation.

Mike G

Mike G

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We're sick and tired of drought*, and sick and tired of watering the garden manually. Has anyone installed or otherwise have experience of a drip irrigation system? What do we need to know before we buy?


*For any of our South African members smiling to themselves and mumbling something about "mud island", this part of England gets about 520 to 550mm of rain a year. That's drier than Jozi or Jerusalem, by quite a way. It's rained once in the last 2 months, as we can remember, and we're in our third long spell of over 30 degrees.
 
duke said:
Our sons wife uses soaker hoses on a timer. I am only familiar with drip irrigation used in a commercial greenhouse operation.
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I'm not certain about the terminology, Scott. We may be talking about the same thing. Basically small hoses with lots of small holes which gently leak water onto the ground adjacent to the plants.
 
We tried the drip system several years ago. Designed and installed main pipes and feeders and various speed drips and a network back to several outside taps with timers. Great for three months then plants grow, die and get moved. We soon got fed up of moving stuff. I could box up and send you what we have left. (Quite a bit of pipe and fittings). My conclusion great for greenhouses or if nothing changes, but for UK gardens that are a work in progress no. We use it for our house in Crete but that is small and nothing changes.
 
I have a Hunter irrigation system for my lawn and flower beds. The water source is a 7-meter deep well and a submersible pump. The lawn has 16 pop-up MP rotator heads, two zones of eight MP rotators, to provide complete coverage at about 1cm per hour. The six flower beds are divided into two zones using surface drip lines covered with a layer of mulch.

The Hunter controller adjusts the default watering duration based on the weather. This system has been working great since it was installed in 2012.

Update: Here is a photo of one flower bed I changed in 2022. This shows the drip line before I added the plants and mulch. The dark spots are after a quick test to check for leaks.

2022-08-7.jpg
 
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PAC1 said:
We tried the drip system several years ago. Designed and installed main pipes and feeders and various speed drips and a network back to several outside taps with timers. Great for three months then plants grow, die and get moved. We soon got fed up of moving stuff. I could box up and send you what we have left. (Quite a bit of pipe and fittings). My conclusion great for greenhouses or if nothing changes, but for UK gardens that are a work in progress no. We use it for our house in Crete but that is small and nothing changes.
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This would be for our veggie patch, so would be set out in the spring and taken up in the autumn....but necessarily be in a fixed location in between.
 
We planted a bunch of trees for privacy and eventually as wind breaks. Used 1,000L IBC tanks perched on an empty cage. Trees are too far from the house to hook up to the house water. A battery timer set to go off every morning for a couple hours or so. Flexible plastic pipe along the tree line with an emitter poked into the pipe to drip at the tree's roots. I have to use an IBC tank on a trailer to go down the road to a water pumping station to buy more water every 4 or 5 days or so and refill them with a gas powered pump. Best not to let them go dry as a strong wind can knock them over.

For the vegetable garden A timer on a garden hose is set as the weather dictates. Plants like carrots, radishes, beets etc are on soaker hoses. Plants like pole beans or squash are on emitters (less water wasted between plants). All hoses have a quarter turn tap to adjust the flow of that hose or line so all areas get the water they need without overwatering in different areas.

I don't mind setting up a system but I wish my wife wouldn't keep rearranging the beds each year. It means I have to reconfigure everything each spring.

Pete
 
I've tried a drip system as used in commercial greenhouses. It works extremely well, but we have very hard water and limescale clogged it, so I think it might depend on your water. We were at RHS Wisley on 3 July and the red peppers and tomatoes in their greenhouses (unshaded) were both showing burnt patches!

Surprised you've had so little water. Here in Kent we've had several thunderstorms and regular overnight rain, despite 34C during the day. Farmers must be struggling.
 
Mike, I also have a load of drip watering stuff you are welcome to. I can take some pictures if you like. If you're lucky then they will be the same type as PAC1
 
AJB Temple said:
I've tried a drip system as used in commercial greenhouses. It works extremely well, but we have very hard water and limescale clogged it, so I think it might depend on your water....
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We have very hard water too.
 
My garden is frazzled.
Concentrating on saving the runner beans and courgettes.
Will be the first time since we moved here 6 years ago that we won’t have tomatoes, they just didn’t get going despite being cosseted.
 
In simple terms the dripper system needs an individual small pipe and dripper (mini tap) to each plant. It provides very accurate watering of the plant you want watering. But it is a Faff to set up and a pain to change. It gets expensive versus 50p worth of courgettes. The porous pipe is good if you have a long line of plants you need watering. I have used it well on two hedges. It is easy to over water with this as the water in the pipe will leak out long after you turn the tap off. A long line of runner beans or up and down the line of potatoes would work but you also water the weeds so more weeding to do. It can be re-used year after year..
For our veggie plot we usually just set up a directional sprinkler at one end and water the lot in one go.
 
PAC1 said:
In simple terms the dripper system needs an individual small pipe and dripper (mini tap) to each plant. It provides very accurate watering of the plant you want watering. But it is a Faff to set up and a pain to change. It gets expensive versus 50p worth of courgettes. The porous pipe is good if you have a long line of plants you need watering. I have used it well on two hedges. It is easy to over water with this as the water in the pipe will leak out long after you turn the tap off. A long line of runner beans or up and down the line of potatoes would work but you also water the weeds so more weeding to do. It can be re-used year after year..
For our veggie plot we usually just set up a directional sprinkler at one end and water the lot in one go.
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Great explanation, Peter. Thank you. That's cleared up my confusion. Clearly we need a soaker system. Rows of potatoes, sweetcorn, legumes, salad stuff....everything in rows...obviously lend themselves to a straight run of hose.
 
Yes, but whilst it may be impossible to over water sweetcorn the rocket will be drowned. There may be different types of porous pipe so you can tweak the amount of watering according to your need (I do not know). Also the porous pipe will deliver the water in the hose pipe to the lowest point on the run once you turn off the tap (simple gravity) so plan where that additional watering is going.
 
We used a drip system when we lived in Oregon. In that climate there is very little rain from June to September. The system works best for row crops as others have said. It is helpful to have a separate valve for each line. It also is worth calculating how much water you need and whether your water pressure can supply it. The parameters will probably come with whatever system you buy. One thing to be ready for is that with the drip, the surface of the soil never looks wet so it is hard to tell how much water the plants are getting. It is a good idea to measure the volume coming out of a hole per unit time and have an idea of how much each plant needs.

We used the drip system in our shrub and flower beds as well. That worked great once set up but it was a pain in the fall when it was time to rake leaves. It was also harder to tell when there was a break or clog in a line since the lines would get covered with vegetation.
 
 
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