Todd, Man you are doing the hard stuff. Two ibuprofen is better. Here is the hydraulics. Approximately 0.5 psi for every foot of elevation the water level is from the garden surface. For example if the height difference is 10 feet you will experience 5 psi at the garden outlet pipe. The pressure will decrease as the height of the water level decreases. In low pressure water distribution pipe sizes need to be bigger because your flow velocity will be low. See what flow your system will deliver by filling a 5 gallon bucket up and timing the fill. Do it several times and average the gallons per minute. You will now know how long it will take to deliver a certain amount of water to a zone. At least you won't need pressure regulators but probably a filter screen if your going with drip or soaker hoses. Think about pvc with holes drilled into it at what ever spacing you need(I can help you with this). You need to calculate the usage flow rate of the drip tubing or soaker hose to plan correctly for even distribution. Who will coordinate the water regime for the garden? Talk to a local landscaper to help you and you will advertise his name in the garden. Trial and error is a way of learning life. Aloha

I prefer http://www.dripirrigation.com/ Their shipping costs are cheap for the lightweight stuff (emitters, couplers, etc). If you ever need heaver hoses and stuff, you're probably better off getting that at the local home improvement stores. Those kits are pretty nice to start out with. You can always add to it as your situation changes. As far as simplest program. The drip tape, t-tape and soaker hoses are the easiest because you don't have to fuss with all the individual emitters. Of course that takes some of the flexibility out of things, but it's not a bad way to go.

It's hard for me to figure out what I want from a catalog so I called a nursery to see if they carried drip irrigation parts since the place I used to buy from doesn't carry them anymore. They didn't, but said they heard that Lowes was carrying a new line and sure enough they do. I like it when you can poke around to see what's available and then if you buy the wrong thing it can be easily returned. Thought maybe some of you might want to do that too. This is the brand: Here is a link that might be useful: Mister Landscaper

Thanks Mike, I am asking mainly on a schedule because I will be leaving from may 18th - july 7th. Any other time I will probably cap the irrigation tubes and just use the hose since like you said I can just monitor better that way, or atleast until I feel the trees are healthy again. Another issue is that my drip lines are all hooked up to the same line which connect to bells of fire plans, palm trees, and the citrus trees. I just talked to the nursery where I got the plants from and they said while I'm gone it would be fine to water my tree every 3 days on a drip with about 20 gallons worth of water? After I get back I can go back to monitoring it. So if I mulch, could I drip 20 gallons every 3 days?