Paula

I have been using my pvc system for about 7 years now. I bought an other bundle of 1/2 sch. 40 electrical plastic conduit about 2 wks. ago because I have expanded my garden.
I can construct with the gray pipe a little cheaper, and it is said to be a little more uv resistant, which I dont think will matter because either will last me.

Larry

electrical conduit? Wow! We checked on that price at the box stores and the pvc seemed better....but I will go back and check again. We hope to expand on this to use for the entire garden area so thanks for the heads-up! Also helpful to know someone else that has been using this for a while so hope you don't mind if you're my "go to" person on this!

Paula

Paula,

Way to go! The garden looks great. I can tell y'all have been busy working.

Dawn

Paula - what a beautiful garden! I would really be interested in your drip link if you don't mind. Is there a reason why you go with drip irrigation and not soaker hoses? This might be obvious to most but I'm just learning and really appreciate all the great advice (and answers to my stupid questions - Lol).

Congrats!!

Paula, the watering system and the entire garden looks great! Your tomatoes look fantastic.

Traci, I have used a similar set-up for about 4 years. I can't speak for everyone else, but I use the PVC instead of soaker hose, because I have found it more cost effective. PVC runs less per foot and lasts much longer than soaker hoses.

I have linked to a previous thread where Larry and I go over our systems in depth. Maybe it will be helpful.

Michelle

Here is a link that might be useful: Previous irrigation discussion.

See? I knew there had been a thread where this was discussed!!! Thanks for diggin' it up here so I can go back for pointers. We have 2 fenced garden areas and I think we're going to do this to the other one only just a section at a time. (That one is 38 x 60)

Traci - after you read the other thread, check out the video I attached here. Sometimes being able to visually wrap my brain around something is easier. We tried soaker hose one year. I mulch my gardens so I mulched over the top of the soaker hose to get the most benefit from the water. We punctured it anytime we had to dig grass or weeds out of the garden that first year. I don't have as many weeds in that space now, but I still fight crab-grass something terrible so this will last me a lot longer than those hose.

Paula

Here is a link that might be useful: drip irrigation video

Paula,

Thank you for posting your pictures. I'm hoping we can do something similar eventually, so it will help a lot to show these to my husband. Your garden looks great!

Suzie

I KNOW I posted yesterday but it isn't showing. If it ends up being duplicated in some way - sorry!

Anyway - thank you so much for the link and for the video link as well. As I said in my post (that i must have dreamed of doing) -- I am a visual person so I will check out Paula's video link and will forward the other link to DH - that way I can "supervise" his new project. Of course I haven't told him he has the project yet! lol. It does make sense and we also mulch and I did lose a soaker hose last year. Plus - it just looks so professional!

Thanks again!
Traci

Traci, I can't speak for anyone else on this thread who might be using PVC instead of soaker hoses, but as far as I'm concerned, soaker hoses are all junk. I've been using them for several years and finally got fed up and today decided a length of PVC pipe with a lot of holes drilled in it would HAVE to be better than the el cheapo soaker hoses that clog up and spring big leaks and the ends blow off. PVC is super easy to work with. Just a hacksaw and glue (and a drill) and you can make them any length you want. I'm making individual lengths of about the length of my normal garden rows (about 40 feet). If one is too short or too long, I'll just cut shorten or lengthen it, no problem.

Photobucket is down for maintenance so I can't see the pics right now, but I am anxious to see them. Congratulations! I know what a relief it must be to have a watering system in place.

I am glad I read this before springing for soaker hoses for next year. My husband wanted to use pvc or plastic conduit, and for once maybe he was right (smile).

Can you leave the system in place over the winter? For me it would be an enormous job to assemble and disassemble each year.

Thanks,

Jo

Jo, if you are not going to redo your beds you can leave them in place, but I take mine up every year so I can till in more organic matter. You will need to do something to protect the feed lines from freezing if they have water in them.

I make all my tubes 22 feet long and attach a short water hose on the end. When I want to redo a row I just undo the hose and pull the tube out so it wont be in the way of reworking the soil in that row. Each row has its own ball valve. My headers are made to where I can place rows as close as one foot apart or as far apart as 12 feet. I dont have a lot of assembley, I just unhook and drag everything to the shed and place in the 22' long rack I have built for the tubes.

tejas55, you may notice a pressure drop over the 40 tube.
When I was using 40' tubes I made the holes a little closer together toward the opposite end of the tube, or fed from the center of the tube. By doing this it made the water flow more equal along the tube.

Larry

Good job Paula. What a great example of working smarter, not harder. Way to go! Just curious, what do you have wrapped around the base of your tomato plant in picture 2?

Again, great job!

Lynn - thanks! Unfortunately, even with all that "engineering"...the tomatoes are "toast" - literally. This summer has just been brutal. In fact, everything in my garden is toast. We have well water so I don't have to pay for that but I DO have to pay for the electricity to run the well pump. I don't think our well has enough water in it to have saved the garden this year.

And that around the tomatoe plant? It's that metal sheeting stuff that DH used when we roofed a couple of years ago. We tried that last year and had much success with it since good, old-fashioned metal coffee cans aren't around anymore. Makes a good substitute. The new plants that were protected by those did much better than the ones protected by cut-up milk gallons. The added plus is that as the plant gets larger...I didn't have the issues with the tomatoe worms that others had.

And like Larry - I will use this method again. I won't have to worry as much about lay-out because the drilled holes will be my guide. We've marked certain ones "T" for tomatoe, "P" for peppers, etc. with that handy-dandy garden marker Dawn gave me!

Paula

I can see them now. Wow I am in awe! GREAT job!!

Jo

Great looking plant!

{{!gwi}}

Don't we wish they would look like that all season long!

Keith

That was one of my 2 Cherokee Purple and it was the first plant to produce an edible tomatoe! Heck yeh I wish they looked like that all season long! The other one was in a pot and didn't fare so well.

Also, you can kinda see the CRW cages we made and used this year. A triad, zip stripped together and 6' tall. I'M SOLD! I think that this year, with all of the help and encouragement I got here, I made HUGE strides in "working smarter, not harder". Onward thru the Fog! LOL! Is this a great state or what?

Paula

Paula, I did see your cage and I think it would be real eazy to bend the horizontal wires in a loop to attach one section of the triad to the next. Attach section A to section B, then attach section B to section C, then use zip ties to attach section C to section A. This way the three sections are actually tied together in one piece that will fold up flat for winter storage.

Keith

______________________________________________________________________________

"I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright." ~Henry David Thoreau

Ahem...mi-mi-mi-mi... "the knee bone's connected to your thigh bone".

Keith - you got it! The ease in storage was ANOTHER reason we decided the investment was worth the effort and initial expense. DH says to mention that "hog rings" will also work in place of zip strips. (whatever the heck those are...I'm still too much of a "city girl".)

Lynn - you made me literally laugh out loud!!!! And then I had to read the post out loud to DH....who also cracked up! I could use a daily dose of your humor!!!

Paula

I may have missed it,but what water presser are we using?

tulsacityfarmer,

I start out with about 44lbs. of pressure. The pressure will drop with each hole you have in your pvc system. The most pipe I could run ( feeding thru a 5/8 hose) was about 150 ft. The more slope you have the less pvc pipe you can run. ( I like running about 80 to 100 feet at a time)

At the old house I ran a 3/4" line from the well to the garden which gave me much more flow, and I could run more more feet of irrigation tubes.

My system is glued together. I started out using my system about 7 or 8 years ago and it is not all the same because I experimented as I started using it.

I started out with high pressure and just using the tubes in areas where disease was a problem, I also tried using 40 and 50 foot tubes with holes drilled from 8 to 15 inches apart.

I moved into the house I live in now about 4 years ago and my garden is much small now because I have very hard tight soil, plus now I have to buy my water.

I think you will find that with about 45 lbs of line pressure you can feed approx 300 1/16 dia holes, at that time you have dropped to well under one pound of pressure. If your lines are not some what level you wont be getting satisfactory flow in all areas. You can increase the flow by using ball valves with larger opening in your feed line.

I have tried running the tubes above and below the mulch and I think I like above the mulch better because if I have the holes in the side or top of the tube I can see if I have a hole plugged and the mulch breaks down faster if it stays damp.

I know this is a lot more than you ask for, but I get carried away some times.

I think you will fine that all our systems are a little different, but all get the job done.

The largest problem you will face is too much slope on your tubes. In some cases I have driven stakes along the row and ties the tubes to it to make them more level. Otherwise you will have a 1/2 inch high stream at one end of the tube and a 6 inch high stream at the other.

Larry

wish i could get my plumber dh to sit and read all this. he is going to just put in dripper hoses for the fruit trees. i am going back to handwatering since the sprinklers do very little. i water for 2 to 3 hours and the next day it is all dry, and i do this often just before the sun comes up, like 3 or 4 a.m.--way before the sun comes up.

thanks for the links. i liked the idea of soaker hoses, then on top cardboard, and then the mulch.

we don't have a large area, but it sure would be nice to have what my friend has, which is some type of sprinkler system in her flower garden that waters it all. they may have it buried.

but like others, no matter how much i water my flowers, herbs, etc. do not look happy at all. they want rain without cloride and flourine, and way less heat.

Ok...weird question here, but when I was dinking around and googled PVC pipe, I kept coming up with all of this "green" stuff about how "poisonous" it is (!)...isn't this what our drinking water runs through (I'm on city water, etc.)?? Are they sounding a non-existent alarm, or am I missing something here?
BTW...I love it and I'm going to put one of these together for my beds this next year!

Sharon

Sharon, I cant think of anything that is without some risk. I am not concerned about PVC pipe at this time, if I were I would buy a filter that could remove lead from my drinking water. It would be to costly to filter all of your water from lead, especially outside water.

I dont recall reading of other concerns other than lead.

Hopefully someone will respond that is more up to date than I am.

Larry

Sharon - I read this thread earlier and meant to respond...but dang it! Dinner was ready and I HAD to fry okra. lol!

I know I heard some nay-sayers a while back squaking about the petroleum products used in the making of PVC....but their concerns were so miniscule when considering the amount of "possible" contamination compared to the amount of time it took to get there that I personally, dismissed it. I may be called on the carpet for it at some time, but I don't think it's even as serious as all the disposable diapers that are going into our landfills. Recently, I've discovered that they are even making home siding out of PVC because of its' longevity. That ought to tell ya something.

Really now, I'm here to vote you try this method for your gardening needs next year. We've been so pleased with the ease of watering, plus the fact you can easily dis-assemble, then easy to re-assemble..and do that again for many years later that I think the pros outway any cons for many, many years down the road.

Frankly, I'm kinda giggling that this thread got resurrected since I posted it several months ago. Must mean that maybe I stumbled onto something that all of us might find useful! Makes me happy that my gardening friends found it noteworthy!

Paula

Thanks, Paula!! And yes....you are just awesome that way :~)

Actually, we're all so TIRED of hauling hoses or hand-watering to conserve that we've got to do something different. I've had it with my soaker; I'll put it at my foundation and it'll do just fine there.
Now I just need to construct the awesome garden boxes I picked up at Sam's, kill off the grass, lasagna layer it, haul in some dirt, my composted stuff, and other amendments...and then the easy part - build the watering system! I may leave that last part for the spring (after I spend the winter drawing out my schematics and listing parts needed)...fun stuff!

Sharon