We have an area under the front windows and along the front of our house that we will be planting some shrubs and flowers in (bouganivillea or firebrush or ???). It faces the west/full sun and in our area that wall takes a beating with our 100 deg plus summers.

The flower bed is a narrow 3 x 15 feet flower type bed. I was wondering which would be the best irrigation system? Sprinkler heads or drip? We already have pvc pipe laid to tie it into the sprinkler system we are installing on the other side of the driveway.

Thanks for your help.

Why:
1. The drips clog and need to constantly be replaced. Time, money and effort I no longer have.
2. The dripper waters a cone of soil... hopefully near the roots of the plants... but no where else. I've found that this inhibits the growth of a large, healthy root system because all the rest of the soil is bone dry. The bone dry soil is constantly trying to hydrolyze and therefore steals the moisture from the "cone".
3. A sprinkler system using the correct shaped spray-heads and correct spray time watering all the soil in a given area is the most efficient and plant-healthy in my Central Valley HOT summer gardens.

A few caveats though-- if this is on the same valve as a sprinkler system, then it won't be such a good idea to mix drip and sprinklers, as they water very differently and need to run for very different lengths of time. Also, if you're going to put in drip you need to put a pressure reducer (normally down to 30 psi) on the valve that feeds the drip-- this will greatly... greatly improve the life of your system.

I can't refute westelle's personal experience, but I work with drip on a nearly daily basis, and it generally has worked fine for me. Having said that, it DOES require more maintenance than spray, and you have to go and look at the base of the plants themselves, etc. to see if something is broken, versus, say, looking at just each sprinkler head. Basically, there's just more points where water is emitted by the system.

Still, drip uses significantly less water, and that's usually good for ones bills. It also promotes less weeds-- particularly if you mulch appropriately.

I hope that was helpful.

Last year I removed all the drip in the frontyard borders and re-installed sprinkler heads on the risers for better coverage after removing a lot of cannas. I am slowly switching to Australian and South African natives and will revert back to drip.

I don't feel I know enough to recommend one system over another, but I CAN recommend a local knowledgeable supplier:

http://www.urbanfarmerstore.com/drip/drip.html

The Urban Farmer (in El Cerrito/Richmond) walked me through all the details I needed to resolve in order to set up my drip system for my raised vegetable beds....we have the 1/4" line with internal drippers every 6" strung through-out the beds and it has worked really well for us for about 3ish+ years..... we DO have it all attached to the filter that the urban farmer recommended also...don't know how big of a diff. it's made...but it all works pretty well...

good luck!
----lucia in CA

Ryan

The real objection to spray systems is the water that evaporates or simply blows away, and also that sprays spread disease spores. Stop spraying your roses and the rust just goes away...

For drip systems, a simple, $5 filter will remove the sediments, but mineral build-up is tricky. The solution I found best is the Ro-Drip tapes.

The tape is flexible, has emitters pre-molded in every 8" to 16", is inexpensive (about 4 cents per foot), and hooks into a standard drip syste supply line. It runs at <10 psi. Whenever you pressure them up, they flex and any mineral salts just slough off the plastic and flow away.

Using this, with a later of mulch over the top, really cuts water usage down, provides even soil moisture, and does a better job watering my gardens that any other system I've tried. The mulch later is critical, as it allows the water to soak into the entire planting bed evenly, reduces evaporation and prevents salt build-up in the soil.

I expanded my gardens by 3 times the area, and use less water than before using the tapes. I have a page that show pictures of the system in the link below...