schmidt, I feel your pain. My garden would benefit from drip irrigation, but how on earth would I get tubing to all my beds, as they are spread across a large area and also contain barrels and pots and hanging buckets. In most of my years of gardening I have used overhead sprinkling (Rainbird impulse sprinklers) and my vegetation has never seemed to suffer from that, but this year I am growing some heirloom indeterminate types of tomatoes, and I know I don't dare have wet foliage or I'll have diseases with them. I'm also growing more squash and cucumbers, and would like to try to avoid powdery mildew, if possible.

I have a water source available at all three outer corners of my garden. I'd welcome suggestions as to how to provide drip irrigation to everything.

(click photo to enlarge)

Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden

Well, YMMV, but:

I ran a spigot out to the middle of the ~300 sf raised bed. Coming off the back of the riser pipe is another spigot with a two-station Melnor battery-operated timer. One soaker hose goes one way, the other in the opposite direction.

Last season, during a 3-week record heat wave, the station on my side ran every 72 hrs for 1 hour, delivering IIRC about 3/4 inch of water for a cycle. That portion of the bed runs from 15-22 inches in depth and is ~100 sf. The soaker hose was 75 ft long, ran back and forth across the bed along the long axis, and each pass was spaced ~6-8 inches apart IIRC. Over the top I placed landscape fabric to retain moisture and cut flaps in the fabric for plants, which included toms, peppers, tomatillos, carrot, radish, broccoli, soybeans, peas, beans, herbs...etc. I was a little paranoid about the crushing heat wave and often checked the soil and found it was always wet & this year I might back off a bit, but the timer has only certain settings and isn't that tweakable.

In my mind this system is fairly flexible for plants in the ground. No ability to run a 1/4 spaghetti tube to hanging pots/SWCs, but I have an underground irrigation system with one valve dedicated to a 3/4 drip hose.

Hope there is something helpful in there for someone...

Dan

For this season I'm going with three-tube sprinkler hoses, turned upside down and connected with short hoses and "cheap yellow" Y connectors. The hoses have two female ends, so they can be connected with plain hose remnants between beds, run in a U through the long beds, looped in a circle through the round beds, run in a straight line through the beans and peas against the fences. Covered with mulch and run on low pressure, this should slightly mimic drip irrigation. It looks like I'll be "building" lots of short hoses to connect the tubes. Hanging and potted plants will have to be hand watered, but I have no life outside the garden so that shouldn't be a problem.

I'll have an entire year to see if this works well for me, or to plan a drip system to take its place.

Granny

Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden

I like your layout, AG, and why not spend all your time there?

Dan

Dan, I have a new grandbaby I must bond with, and grandchildren waiting for me to get home and spoil them! Besides, I spend too much time in here with you guys, or writing in my blogs, my garden journal and my individual plant analysis file. Who has time for gardening?

Granny

Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden

I'm converting four sprinkler heads by adding Hydro-Port® Watering Manifold by Raindrip and running tubes through out the beds. I already have a timer on the sprinklers so I can use this system on those days I can't water by hand.

Liisa

Here is a link that might be useful: Hydro-Port® Watering Manifold

Theres a lady here in Utah who designs watering systems for SFG's. Shes excellent and I have used her system for 8 years now. She will put together a plan for you. Its not all that expensive either. I think it cost me something like 30 bucks by the time I was finished, and that includes water to 4 decent sized beds.

I have a couple of the Raindrip manifolds here in my Arizona landscaping. I should say HAD. After one year I took them both out and went with a non-adjustable dual port riser adapter. I found I was constantly having to adjust the flow from the 8 different ports on the manifolds, and I'm not here six months of the year to do that.

Actually, I might take those manifolds home with me and try them out...our water pressure is steadier there than it is here with the well.

I think, with three sprinkler risers (and possibly four if I remove some lilacs and expand the garden), I should be able to figure out a pretty good drip system. I just won't have the time to get it done this spring, as I have too may other things that must be done....like get the four 4x4 beds connected as one long bed, haul in a yard of compost and bucket it out to the back yard, finish the T-bar trellis in the raspberry bed and buy/plant the raspberry canes...whew, I'm tired already!

Granny

Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden

I love the idea of drip tape. They last much longer than soaker hose and it's not very expensive. I too am not certain how it would work with my beds, but I'm sure you could attach it to tape with no holes. It's a job for another day however, since I don't really even have water to the garden yet. That project's first.

I have 50' of the drip tape left from doing my AZ cactus garden, so it's in the box and will go home (with the 8-port manifolds) to play with. I especially would like to get it coiled into my barrel planters.

Granny

Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden