Mellisa,

We live in the desert and drip irrigation is common here. We have been using it at our previous and current house for 16 years. The main tubing is quite inexpensive here and the mini tubing that comes off that isn't a lot either but the flags can be a little pricy if you are using a lot of them but they can be reused on a different plant when you are done with them.

I would think burying the tubing underneath the roads would be sufficient protection for them, maybe putting the tubing through a piece of schedule forty steel pipe in those places would be a good idea though and then for sure they would be safe from crushing.

You can connect the pipe together so you could go long distances with it. So far as moving plants they do have "blinds" that you use to plug up holes in the tubing where you no longer want to run a drip line. These can leak but sometimes are ok. I guess you could always take your existing microtube line and kink it closed or try to move the flag to the off position but then of course you wouldn't be reusing it.

I love drip irrigation, it puts the water at the root of the plant instead of in the air where a lot gets evaporated. Problems we have had with it are flags getting clogged up from our hard water so the lines have to be checked often and flags turned until they clear. Also if the flag gets stepped on it can easily be broken off which will squirt water but we can usually hear when this happens and track down the offender and replace the flag.

I say go for it, good luck, Maria

I have a drip system that hopefully will get installed soon! When you get up there in numbers you can spend hours watering. I like to water and find it relaxing but when it gets humid, forget it.

Carla

Hi Melissa. A lot of the system here is drip irrigation, and each year Br. Mark changes more of it over to drip. It has saved on water bills even though the gardens are overall larger than they were 2 years ago. I am not particularly mechanical, so cannot give you the technicalities, but the effects of a drip system are amazing. Here, because the drip line is not as sturdy as a metal pipe, it will need frequent maintenance and tweaking, but it is worth it.

When I put a plant in a new place, Br. Mark is there soon putting down a new line to water it. I bet youÂd be very pleased with such a method if it could work in your situation.

Jerome

I also think you will be happy if you can get started installing and using it. At least test it in an area that's easy for you to setup. I have my garden setup into about 7 zones - a 1/2" tube feeds each zone. As suggested, run the tubing through a pipe to go across roads - it works perfectly.

The bulk of the maintenance work is making sure the system is working right for each plant - I walk around and check it quite often. Checking everything and making repairs in Spring takes a bit of time. Reconfiguring the drippers takes quite a bit of time. For example, this year I decided I wanted to water everything longer/slower so I had to check the dripper on each plant and replace them to get the lower flow that I wanted. But once it's setup, watering is SO easy. Plop a simple timer on your water source and let 'er rip.

My system has been in for 5-6 years in some places - most of it above ground - and it is holding up well. It freezes in winter, and it doesn't burst. It's been a great time saving investment, it also has vastly improved my plant survival rate.

The systems here are not very expensive. You could always spread out the installation of it over a couple of years if you need to.

Cheers,
Michelle (drip irrigation fan) :-)

Gray water! If the house is uphill from the plants, you can capture water from the sinks, bath, and laundry to use in the garden. A little soap doesn't hurt plants. Ask Ann TN6b about this.

Another option for crossing the road is to leave your hose in the equation. There are connectors to allow hoses to transition to drip irrigation. By using the hose there would be no need to bury pipes/drip lines under the road.
And the hose would not likely be damaged by tractor traffic.
I have drip in my garden beds attached to regular sprinkler valves.
In my veggie plot at the community garden I have a length of hose running to the bed from the spigot. Then an adaptor for the transition to the drip system. Works well for me.

As for myself, I tried drip irrigation briefly in a section of my garden and soon took it out. It was always breaking, sometimes because of animal damage and sometimes all on its own. Our water pressure is quite variable and I suspect that as a major factor. Also, I tend to move plants around quite a lot, and drip doesn't work well for that.

We are now considering putting in a roofwater collection system for landscape watering. We have already put in solar panels to generate most of our own electricity so this seems to be the logical next step. We haven't argued with the city about it yet, though, and they may not be pleased. Awfully fussy, our city.

Rosefolly

Just curious, Rosefolly, how did your system break?

Mine rarely breaks, but I use hoseclamps to hold the 1/2" fittings to the hose. We also have highly variable pressure and the hose used to blow apart from the fittings when the pressure went from zero to ~50 psi (that was really aggravating). With the clamps, it doesn't have problems. The last break was caused by a grazing horse catching a hoof in the line and busting a T fitting.

Otherwise, I seem to cause the most damage by occasionally hitting it when digging.

Cheers,
Michelle

Michelle, what you said. Things kept popping off and popping apart. I didn't want to do constant maintenance. The idea was to take that chore off my shoulders. With my current mix of spray and bubbler, I rarely have to do anything at all for watering. I do still hand water the roses permanently planted in pots, over a dozen.

This way of watering does use more water than drip. But much of my garden is so intensely planted I would have used almost as much water. There was only one garden area for which drip was really appropriate. And I think eventually I will infill with more plants so that it won't be suitable anymore.

For all these reasons, and the periodic droughts we get, we are investigating diverting winter rainfall onto the roof into a cistern for summer watering. I don't know yet if it will be feasible, or permitted by code.

Melissa,
It is very easy and very cheap to take a PVC water line out to the areas of the yard where you need a faucet. That way you can hook the hose up in different parts of the yard. The task seems daunting if you have never done it before, but if you ask someone in a plumbing store they can show you how easy it is. I have 3 different faucets that I put in a couple of years ago and they really make life easier. I plan on putting in a couple more pretty soon but haven't had the time yet. You would have to rent a ditch witch to dig the trench to lay the PVC in but they are not expensive to rent.
I live on 2 acres and have plants in about 7 different areas, pretty much spanning the property on all 4 sides and in between. I have drip irrigation on all of those plants. It's really 7 different drip systems. That way I just drag the hose to the section I want watered and hook it up and turn it on. Some of the sections are established now and only get watered once or twice a year. But it's nice to be able to hook the hose to the drip system and then go into the house where the air conditioning is! It doesn't cost that much if you buy the right parts to begin with. If money is really tight then just do the drip for the areas you will be watering the most often this summer. Then next summer you may have a different area that gets the most water and you can buy a new system for that area or add on to the old one.

Rosefolly,
If the parts were coming apart then you bought the wrong brand. I've bought almost every brand and some of them are very good and some are VERY BAD. Can I recomend a product on here or is it against the rules? I guess I'll recomend anyway. Mr. Landscaper brand is the best for 1/2" tubing and the connectors that hook the 1/2" tubing together. Mr. Landscaper is also best for the 1/4" tubing. DIG brand is the best for the Pressure Compensating drippers. They also sell the connectors for the 1/4" tubing. Around here Lowe's sells Mr. Landscaper and Home Depot sells DIG. The DIG products are much cheaper if bought on line. I can promise you that Mr. Landscaper tubing will not allow the drippers or connectors to pop off! Email me if you have any questions about that.
Carrie

Melissa, I don't know enough about the details to be helpful, but I will say that from what I think I've read the inventors of drip irrigation were the Israelis, who have even more severe water shortages than you have. That's why they went that way. It was a way for them to get agricultural production out of their large expanses of desert.

I just thought to add this:
Each shrub or rose gets a drip. I don't really move those around much. But the perennials come and go and they don't get a drip. Instead the same folks who sell drip irrigation sell 1/4" soaker hose tubing that you connect to the 1/2" tubing and I just weave those in and out of the beds for any annuals and perennials.
I really think that one of the reasons my roses do so well is that they get a big long drink of water once a week when the weather is dry. One big long drink is better than lots of little sips that may not reach the whole depth of the root system.

What I do is put in a drip irragation system just for the first year.
The new roses that I planted last week in the ground(25) all will be watered with the drip system.
I water them for about 15 miniutes ever other day depending on the weather.
The drip system sends out about 1 gallon of water in that time.
Its very simple to time it out once set-up.
I uses a system from Lee Valley tools that works quite well and is simple to use.
I find that it is best to water every week the first year that the roses are planted as it helps to develope a good root system.
After the first year I move and change the system to the next place I need it.
I hate draging a hose around so this works for me.
Stanc

I got a lot of interesting information: thanks, folks. I'll be thinking about this. The important thing is to have a system that can be moved around from year to year, and that can cover considerable distances, as the plants to be watered aren't close to each other.

Carrie,
I think you'd have to see our property to understand my skepticism about putting in pipes for faucets. We have very stony, rocky ground the pipe would have to be laid through; the pipes would have to cross roads; and the roads themselves are so steep any fairly heavy piece of machinery would be very hard to control. We would also have to lay a few hundred meters of pipe to reach our garden areas, as they're distant from each other and from the house. Jannorcal's idea of keeping the hose to feed in the water is what I would do. We currently have three hoses, I believe: one for the big garden, one for the area close to the house, and one for the shade garden.

Michaelg,
Of course, gray water. We've been using it for years, but this year I'm getting more focused about it. We've already routed our bathroom sink water into a corner bed, and my husband will be getting a connector so that we can get our washing machine water out into the yard with a hose. I can use the wash water for young plants in mulched beds and the rinse water for plants in pots. I'm beginning to collect some of our bath/shower water as well for flushing the toilet (a tip from an earlier thread on water conservation during droughts). We take our showers in the garden when the weather gets hot, using a portable shower head. I still need to figure out the kitchen sink.

Thanks again, everybody. There really are a lot of good ideas--and some encouragement--here.

Melissa

Carrie, I'll remember what you said if I ever decide to expand the current system. I'm actually really happy with it as it is now. Who knows what the future will bring? But I'll remember Mr Landscaper and DIG.

Rosefolly