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.
Late to the party, by quite a big margin, but I have some thoughts having gone the commercial and DIY routes on this with two rounds of raised beds.
First, drip irrigation = great. Soaking the soil slowly is way better than flooding it and having a lot of the water simply roll off. It also keeps water of leaves, which is generally good for your plants.
I found homeowner grade commercial systems effective, but also fiddly and expensive. I was happy with the Rain Bird setup in my first garden after I installed an inline pressure regulator. The pressure regulator was necessary because we have very good water pressure out our spigot, even after 50’ of hose. The Rain Bird system didn’t offer much flexibility year over year. For example, if I planted a sprawling zucchini one year and wanted to put tomatoes or peppers there the next I was cutting hoses and swapping fittings as you can fit multiple tomatoes/peppers in in the space of one zucchini. Draining everything for winter was also fiddly and I would inventively lose a few parts to the freeze/thaw cycle. These systems are not easy to break down and reuse.
My original garden beds wound up getting torn out when we pulled out our pool and I went the DIY route with our second garden setup. Instead of running a hose to my beds, as I had before, I dug a trench and laid PVC pipe underground. Each of my beds has its own ball valve to help balance flow/pressure. On the house side, I PVC glued a hose adapter that I use to tie into a hose bib. I usually have a brass Y valve attached to it, so I can either send water to my garden or the hose.
None of the PVC pipes or fittings downstream of the ball valves have any PVC glue on them, so draining them for winter is super easy. Inside the beds I simply laid the PVC on the ground and drilled 1/8" holes into them every few inches. If you ask your favorite search engine, you can find a number of articles/videos showing variations of this technique. I do have a sprinkler in my raspberry bed, as raspberry canes are weeds and row style irrigation doesn’t work well for them.
Despite using drip irrigation, powdery mildew on squashes and gourds seems unavoidable due to my garden’s location. It’s flanked by trees on its eastern side, which means it doesn’t get direct sun until 10-11 in the morning.
… I hope this wall of text is helpful. Feel free to ask for follow ups.