garden irrigation ideas?

[NetWareHead]

Wondering if anyone in here has any ideas for me please. Ive have a veggie garden for a few years now and have been using lawn sprinklers to get the job done. When the garden is young and plants are short, I can use 2 sprinklers to get full coverage. When the gardens grows tall (I use tomato cages, grow pole beans and stake my cucumber vertically so 6 foot + plants are common, I have trouble getting full coverage as the tall plants block some parts of the garden from the sprinkler. Additionally, I have a farmer friend of mine tell me that sometimes, certain plants I grow are sensitive to watering as the pollination of the flowers an be affected by watering and results in less veggies.

Rather than add a third or more sprinklers I thought that maybe the better solution would be a different irrigation setup in the form of a soaker hose or drip irrigation or something similar.

It would be neater as I have a separate hose running to the garden for each sprinkler now. I would like to save water by irrigating only the soil surrounding the plants. Keeping the water off of plant leaves would also help certain veggies I grow too. Any recommendations here? Thanks...

 

[jaha2000]

I did drip one year. It also helps with weed growth.
I am in process of doing my own irrigation well this year, we will see how it goes.

 

[NetWareHead]

I did drip one year. It also helps with weed growth.
I am in process of doing my own irrigation well this year, we will see how it goes.

Tips, links? something I could read to get started

 

[cabri]

You can by drip nozzles at any sprinkler store and then attached to an irrigation/sprinkler system.

In Florida, we had it for bushes; about 1 meter tube for each bush. If you do such; then you can re-position the end to where you desire the moisture to go.

Then also consider putting spray heads on 1-2 meter high poles attached to a different sprinkler zone(s) for those plants that can use misting.

 

[Greenman]

Underground drip, works like a charm.

 

[oleguy]

Honestly, we just use soaker hoses. The last few years we just swapped the faucet line from hose to hose, but it can take a while to do that. This year, I put a 4-port manifold on the end of the hose connected to the faucet and can get all three boxes at once.

There are two different kinds of soaker hoses I've found: A round hose that looks like it's made out of loosely-packed rubber and a flat, fabric-covered hose that has a smaller flexible tube that's perforated. We have tight turns in the box to hit our plants, so the flat ones work better in our 4'x8' boxes. If you have a straighter run, the round rubber hose might be better.

A word of caution: Neither of the hoses like a lot of pressure, so you want to make sure you are only turning on the faucet enough to get water out the entire line in a very slow, weeping or dripping fashion. If you see spurting or jets of water, you either have a hole in the line or you turned the water up too high and might be creating holes.

Soaker/Weeping Hose: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Gilmour-...r-Hose-27025HD/202522698?N=5yc1vZbx4eZ1z0zwr0

Round Soaker Hose: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Element-...Hose-WP38050FM/100327811?N=5yc1vZbx4eZ1z0zwr0

Either way, you want to position the hose so that it's an inch or so away from the stem of the plant, and if you double back on your box, to put about 12"-18" in between the lines. If you have closely grouped plants, like pole beans, a single pass of line through the middle of the bunch will cover the root area of 6" -10" of established plants on either side, depending on how water permeable your soil is. If they are still seedings, though, you pretty much need to water them right on top because the root system is still small.

And you're right, some plants just hate wet leaves. Tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers all prefer to keep their leaves dry, especially when they are getting ready and start to fruit. I've heard it's more to do with pathogens and things like powdery mildew. Same with brambles like raspberries. Of course it will rain occasionally and get things wet, but those will be the only times if rain is infrequent enough that you are watering regularly.

 

[Zivic]

drip...
I laid 50+ acres of it this year. it works