When your garden has outgrown your original plan for it, its size may be inhibiting when looking at keeping it watered. There may also be times when you wish to be gone from home for many days, and don’t want to sacrifice your garden by lack of watering. The ‘why’ of the situation is not as important as the ‘how’. Take a look at how to install a garden drip irrigation system for constant moisture.
One of the first things you would want to do would be to figure out much irrigation hose you will need to cover the area requiring this constant wetness. Put a diagram on paper. Lay out a rope, heavy string or garden hose to approximate the length needed. Refer to drip irrigation instructions found on the actual equipment, or to instructions you have found online. There may necessarily be a bit of overlapping to give good coverage, but you don’t want parts too wet.
Once the length of hose needed has been established, note on your diagram where each plant is located along hose length. This will be where you make a reducer connection for a smaller diameter hose. It will be strung to the base of each plant and adjusted for the amount of water each require.
There are also soaker hoses that can be used if rows of garden have to be covered. These are porous hoses that let water come through them at all times. You may be able to add a timer, so there will not be an over-watering situation. Vegetable gardens could use this kind of setup, in addition to the drip setup you may use for individual plantings.
If the home orchard contains many fruit trees, these will benefit from adding a drip system. Adequate, continuous moisture is necessary for proper expansion of fruit. Sparse water, then suddenly an abundance, will likely cause splitting of the fruit skin. Evenly applied water is crucial.
The type of hose you are establishing does not need to be buried, but if some shows in obvious places, a little mulch can be tossed on top of it until new growth of plantings occurs. This greenery will then hide any hose peeking out.
One downfall to knowing how to install a garden drip irrigation system is that you may end up being busier than you like to be. Once people know you have this knowledge, they may request your assistance with their own efforts to put in this system in their yard.
Stop by the Hozelock blog to read more.
