In our garden (zone 9/10 now, Mediterranean climate - so we only have to water for 5-6 months in the summer), we installed 100% drip irrigation years ago. We have good loamy well draining soil, which is clay based. We discovered that teenie tiny drips tended to go straight down, and not actually irrigate the plants at all, except for about a 1 inch circle around where the emitter was. Using several emitters got us several one inch circles. So, it did not matter how long we left it on. After trying to make it work for 2 years, we ripped out the entire thing, and switched to soaker hoses. We used large ones where there were a lot of roses close together. and we could wind the hoses near to all of them. For pots and roses which were not near other plants, we used the non-soaker large hoses, and then put small soaker hoses (1/4 inch) off those which went directly to one plant. I apologize for not being more clear, but my DH does 100% of setting this up, so I don't really know all of the vocabulary and details. We have 4 automatic controllers, each of which has about 6 stations on it (we only run one station at a time, because that is all the water pressure will accommodate). Each of the 24 stations gets watered twice a week, for from between 20 to 30 minutes each time, depending on what it is watering. We get NO Summer rain whatever, none, and the air is very dry here in the Summer - not humid at all. We (usually) get plenty of rain in the Winter. So, our automatic system tends to run from about April through Oct/Nov, or whenever the rain starts. I am sure actual drip systems work somewhere, but not here. I did read somewhere that a gardener had a drip system (and denser soil, so the water spread out more) which he left on for 20+ hours at a time to actually get enough water to the plants.

In some areas that are not on our automatic system, I use soaker hoses which are on manual timers, like a kitchen timer. That way you have to turn them on and set the timer, but it will turn off the water when the timer runs out. My DH got me these because before I had the timers, more than once it happened that I forgot to turn something off, and it ran all night.....Oops!

Hope this is helpful - if I had to do this by myself, I would definitely hire someone to set it up for me.

Jackie

I use drip hoses (drip water all along their length -- what Jackie uses, I think) and calibrate how long to run them by timing how long it takes for water to soak down about 10" - 12" into the soil. This is easily measured with a slender stick: a stick can't penetrate dry soil here, so the stick will only go down into the soil as far as it is wet and stops when it hits dry soil -- measure how far the stick went in and that's how deep you've irrigated. I irrigate once a week during the dry season (we get no rain whatsoever from May through October or November most years).

The rationale for 10 - 12" is that most of the water uptake by plants, including trees and shrubs, occurs in the top foot of soil and, speaking very generally, it takes about 3/4" - 1" of applied water (or rain) per week to achieve this in average soils. This amount of irrigation is enough to keep most non-drought-adapted plants happy.

If you have a drip system with individual emitters, you need to know the delivery of those emitters. They could be as little as 1//4 gallon per hour to 2 gallons per hour. Put a bucket under them and find out what you've got. (What you have is also a function of your pipe pressure, for us it was dependent on what our well could deliver.)

Hmm...even when wet, a stick won't easily go through my dense ,rocky clay,catspa.Moisture measuring devices work better because they're made of metal. What's more, in the area in which I've set up the drip system, I'd bet that if I use my moisture measuring device, it'll say the soil is still moist if not sort of wet after all the rains we've had.But I want to KEEP the soil moist,which is why I want to start turning it on now that the heat has hit us. The roses in this bed are all very young-some newly planted this past fall, otheres planted the previous fall. These latter ones in particular worry me, for though they survived the terrible summer of 2022, they don't seem to have done much as far as becoming established is concerned.

Jackie, your system is far too advanced and your conditions far too superior to mine for me to be able to do much with your advice, but thank you so much anyway. I am indeed scared of something like what you descibe happening,but someone on a recent drip irrigation thread said that they didn't try to have the emitters aim at individual plants, but instead soaked the entire bed. Soaker hoses don't seem to work for me-maybe because the ground is far from flat?

Boy this is challenging...

bart bart - if you have heavy clay soil, a drip system may work better than it does here, as the denser soil would probably make the water spread out more. stillanntn6B has a good idea - measure how much water your emitters are putting out, and then I would experiment with different timing, to see what amount of time would actually get water to your roses by using the moisture measuring device you have.

Jackie

Hmm, this doesn't bode well for my plants since I had a drip system installed recently. Of course everything looks marvelous now because of the abundant winter and spring rain but that should change when it heats up which it thankfully hasn't done so far. Since I only have five roses I'll water with a hose once or twice a week in addition to the drip watering to make sure that a large and deep enough area gets soaked.

My system doesn't have what I think of as "emitters"-just holes in the tubes.I think I'd better do as Ingrid is thinking of doing-water by hand as well as the drip-at least the new implants. This is all so hard to do and anxiety-provoking, what with the heat, the fact that I have no shelter out there, etc. No wonder I've put off trying this for so long. I'm so worried that it'll turn out to be a flop like it was for Jackie. Yet many others seem very happy with drip. However, nobody but me seems to have to cope with the lack of running water! Keep your fingers crossed for me, peeps...

@User "The roses in this bed are all very young-some newly planted this past fall, otheres planted the previous fall. These latter ones in particular worry me..." and "I think I'd better do as Ingrid is thinking of doing-water by hand as well as the drip-at least the new implants." I agree. Newly-planted roses would be of more concern, especially if not planted bare-root and transplanted from pots, because of the tendency for potting soil to dry out faster than the surrounding soil. Until young plants get their roots well out into the surrounding soil, this poses a problem (which, by the way, is why I generally transplant from gallon pots, and never larger than 2-gallon pots, for any kind of plant, as it is a total headache with the soil and conditions I have here to mediate the transition from potting soil to native soil for plants coming from larger pots). I watch transplants in their first year carefully and often supplement the once-a-week irrigation with a mid-week gallon of water, or so, applied directly at the root-ball.

Bart Bart, I think it' will be OK. If in doubt, just run one hose to get your feet wet (pun intended). Your system may need some fine tuning, but just start small and don't rely on it until you see how it works.

Thank you for encouraging me, Steve and Rosylady. It is going to be tough at first, I think, but hopefully will pay off. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained".

Rosylady, I LOVE that mix of delphiniums and achillea!!! What varieties are those ? Such a delicate, lacy effect-and to think that up to now I kind of thought of achilleas as a bit "ho-hum"!!!

Thanks bart! I never really cared much for achillea either...too floppy for my cool and part sun garden. But this variety, called New Vintage Violet, stays shorter. The delphiniums are the Millennium series, which also stays more compact.