Watering your garden with a gardening can or by walking around with a hose can be a real pain, especially if you have a large garden. Some watering methods also aren’t the best if you’re trying to conserve water – sprinklers are only about 65 to 75 percent effective, and watering by hand with a watering can or hose also wastes a lot of water. Plus, letting water get on the leaves of your plants can make them vulnerable to disease. You need an efficient watering system that delivers water right where it’s needed – to the root system.
Drip irrigation could be the answer. Long used in commercial agriculture, drip irrigation systems are becoming more popular with home gardeners, too, especially as options like soaker hoses and drip tape become more readily available. Drip irrigation systems deliver water to the root systems of your plants, without getting the leaves wet. Plants can use about 90 percent of the water applied with a drip irrigation system, and it’s easy to set one up yourself. Here’s how.
Choose the Right Irrigation System for Your Needs
There are three main types of drip irrigation kits you can buy: emitter systems, soaker hose systems, and drip tape systems. You can also buy micro-misting systems, which are ideal for keeping large trees and shrubs irrigated, but can also be used in flower beds and vegetable gardens.
Emitter systems and micro-misting systems are the most complex, expensive, and hardest to set up. Emitter systems consist of hoses with regularly spaced emitters that drip water onto the soil around the base of your plants. These need to be set up in the spring and taken down in the winter to avoid freeze damage to the system, but they’re relatively easy to set up and cost-efficient.
You can also buy soaker hoses, which are porous hoses that you can place near the base of your plants in a flower or vegetable bed. Water comes out of the whole length of the soaker hose, though, so this type of system isn’t ideal for watering trees or widely spaced shrubs – you’ll waste a lot of water in between plants. Drip tape is similar to soaker hoses, but doesn’t last as long. Drip tape can last for about two years, while soaker hoses last three to five years.
Set Up Your Irrigation System
If you’re handy and have some spare time, you can set up your own drip irrigation system, although the ease of setting up the system may vary depending on what kind of system you get. An emitter system or a micro-misting system is going to be more complex to set up, because in addition to running the hoses and connecting the water, you’re also going to have to attach emitters or misters to the hose at intervals along its length.
However, setting up a drip irrigation system shouldn’t be that hard, especially if you’re using soaker hoses or drip tape to irrigate vegetable or flower beds. Run your hoses close to the stems of your plants so that water drips into the soil right at the roots.
For systems using soaker hoses or drip tape, all you have to do is lay the hose and then anchor it to the ground with stakes. For emitter and micro-misting systems, you’ll run the hoses at the bases of your plants and attach the emitters. If you’re placing a system to water widely spaced trees or shrubs, use a misting system and place the misters only where your plants are to conserve water.
You can connect your drip irrigation system to the spigot on the side of your house. Use a garden hose to move water from the spigot to the start of your drip irrigation system. You can place your drip irrigation system on a timer so that it waters your plants early in the morning, to prevent evaporation and the spread of plant diseases.
Remove Your Irrigation System in the Winter
You will need to remove your drip irrigation system in the winter, to prevent freeze damage to the hoses. Your equipment will last longer this way.
Irregular rainfall can make it hard to grow a garden without additional watering. Drip irrigation can help you water your garden plants without wasting water or getting all the leaves wet. That way, you can raise healthy vegetables and flowers, even when it’s not raining regularly – and without the hassle of going outside and watering everything by hand.
