Your experience with Roses and Drip irrigation
wanttogarden
16 years ago
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Comments (10)
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16 years agolast modified: 9 years agochuck_billie
16 years agolast modified: 9 years agoRelated Discussions
Drip water System - Good or Bad
Comments (10)Clogging can have less to do with the brand of emitter than careful maintenance of the drip system if your water supply is implicated. Two things must be done. First, before irrigation season, every single emitter must be checked on every single rose. What a pain. But somehow, the tops of shrublers pop off or screw down. Entropy at work in the garden. Second, you need a good filter on your drip system, especially if you use a non-municipal water supply but even if you do. The filters are very fine and, like the emitters, must be maintained every year and then periodically during the irrigation season with cleaning. I have to clean my filter weekly because of fine sand in my untreated water. Drip irrigation is a pain. It's just less of a pain than irrigating without it. All the parts are manufactured at a cost of a fraction of a penny a piece, and the quality is uneven, no matter which product you use. A significant percentage of parts is defective. No one cares. They toss them and replace them....See MoreDoes drip irrigation water the border around the rose bed?
Comments (10)Last year with a serious drought 28.4". Sedums thrived unwatered across our land. So did all of the native small shrubs by their look this spring. This year we've has 12" to the beginning of April and an additional four inches through yesterday afternoon (and more last night). This year's rainfall is two inches below normal so the fifteen inch hydrologic deficit from last year is only slowly being replenished. A friend from uptown New Orleans called last night. They had rain two days ago and the Gretna/Algiers gauge(across the river from him. Audubon didn't report.) was 8.64" for that six hour storm. (The gauges are important and news down there because they determin the rate the pumps are worked in different sectors of the city.) Yes, catsroses, you ARE going to make money with the installations and with their maintenance. Because people have forgotten that they can reason things out themselves. But it will keep gardens going and that will interest gardeners of the future (not just their yardmen)....See MoreDrip irrigation experience needed
Comments (1)I will assume that you will be feeding your 1/4" lines from a 1/2" poly mainline streched acrossed the base of the rows. If so, I would recomend looping your 1/4" lines up one side and down the other of each row so each end is fed from the source line. This will ensure full pressure through the length of the lines avoiding possible dry areas in your coverage....See Moredrip irrigation in san francisco
Comments (20)I hadn't meant to be abusive of Joe's points, just a counterpoint. Just a note about Urban Farmer's services, they are a full service irrigation store, and sell all the materials to install a conventional spray irrigation system as well. I would like to counter one of Joe's points, about drip irrigation being cheaper to install. I don't find that to be the case, in the systems I design and install, there is more hand labor involved to get emitter line to individual plants, so I'd say that the different systems are probably about on par or even slightly more expensive for a drip irrigation when using higher quality/more reliable fittings and materials. Also, as to the point about needing pressure regulators for drip systems, what is your point? The pressure regulator is not some expensive or elaborate device prone to failure, and even a conventional spray irrigation system will often require a pressure regulator at the valves if the house or street pressures are too high. Where drip irrigation excels is the benefits of using it on difficult to water steep slopes where spray irrigation would cause run-off at the higher application rates, and is not as good at giving deeper watering. You can also get away with using less valves with a larger area of coverage in a typical garden setting, because the water flows required are less volume and pressure. As to maintenance and repairs, I often find that clients with dogs and conventional spray irrigation systems may have more need of regular inspections to repair broken irrigation heads, especially if they conflict with a large dog running along an open metal fence at the street. As well, pop-up spray irrigation heads are equally prone to damage from autos driving over them or lawn mower blades clipping them, and when broken and set to run overnight, the wasted water will be far more wasteful than it would be with a lower flow/lower pressure drip system. I would not waste my time trying to convince someone who has their mind made up about their preferences in irrigation systems, but it is not as black and white as Joe would make it appear. Everyone should irrigate in a way that makes sense for their particular situation. I simply believe that drip irrigation in combination with micro-spray drip can create superb results while also using less water overall. Joe's contention that drip irrigation does not permit deep rooting of plants is only germane for those who don't run their systems long enough to wet the soil deeply. This is also very much a concern with spray systems as well, as most gardeners simply don't know how long it can take to deeply water a clay soil. Most spray systems will cause run-off in clay soils if watered for more than 10 to 15 minutes on a sloping site, and this won't wet the soil much beyond the first inch or two. Not to mention the water lost to wind/over throw spray, and evaporated water lost to the hot sun in combination with winds. In any case, both spray and drip irrigation design have their pros and cons, and the majority of residential homeowners are more likely to be timing their irrigation by schedules rather than plant needs, nor do most adjust their watering schedules more than once or twice a year to reflect the weather and seasons. In specifying which type of system makes more sense for an individual homeowner/client, it helps to weigh all the factors that should influence such a decision. While working as a landscape architect for a large firm doing subdivision homes for a developer, I had occasion to design a subsurface system using Netafim for lawns in this development. I can tell you that it drove the new home buyers crazy, as too many didn't trust that it was working properly, and would reset their individual home's irrigation controllers to vastly overwater the lawns, as they couldn't see it working. While it may make sense to use such a system for a commons area landscape that isn't subject to the whims of different homeowners, I wouldn't recommend it again for the average garden. The one place I would always recommend a spray system over a drip system would be for a client who can't control their dog's digging and chewing of things in the garden. A drip system will be much more vulnerable to damage in such a garden. I've also found that the most common animal damage to drip irrigation systems in my experience has been with squirrels chewing off the hard plastic mister heads I use in gardens which may have subtropicals such as bromeliads mounted on fences or trees. I've learned that the misters should never be mounted on the top of branches, but always on the bottom of a horizontal branch, to make it more difficult for the squirrels to do damage....See Moretaureau
16 years agolast modified: 9 years agoanntn6b
16 years agolast modified: 9 years agodancingnancy55
16 years agolast modified: 9 years agokublakan
16 years agolast modified: 9 years agoberndoodle
16 years agolast modified: 9 years agoathenainwi
16 years agolast modified: 9 years agoagility_mom
16 years agolast modified: 9 years ago
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