Hi All - I’m thinking about getting a drip irrigation system for my garden and was curious if anyone here has tried one. Anything that has worked well, or not so much? Brand recommendations? Rain Bird and Hunter have come up in my searches so far. Other considerations a beginner wouldn’t think about? I’m in the US, so I also need it to be able to be shipped here.
If you’re irrigating on hills, look into pressure compensated emitters.
Also if you’re practicing BDS, lots of drip stuff is made or owned in Israel
Pressure compensating drippers seem to only work for me for a season. I’m not sure if they are getting clogged with debris, or just getting damaged from being out in the elements. I recently got drippers that are essentially like little spigots that you can dial up or down, and i end up just tweaking each one until the flow rate is good for all of them (also nice to tailor to each plant). The other benefit of those is that you can just open it all the way to blow out any sediment.
Good to know about the BDS trap, damn. Do you know offhand of any that aren’t? I’ll have to do more reading there.
Edit: for anyone else trying to untangle the BDS bit. It looks like Drip Works is an Israeli firm. Rain Bird, Hunter, and Drip Depot are US companies, but they distribute across Israel; Blumat is German/Austrian also distributes in Israel. Has been tricky to figure out because drip irrigation was created by an Israeli so tons of mentions about Israel just because of that. If I find anything more helpful I’ll try to update
Netafim and arkal are the two Israeli ones I’ve run across in Canada. Although it looks like arkal is owned by amiad now… Also Israeli…
And I second the thing about the adjustable and cleanable emitters. They’re great, just don’t lose the little piece of rubber inside.
Also, hillbilly way… Just stick a screw into your poly pipe, and you can dial the drip rate by fiddling with the screw…