I recommend DripWorks. If you e-mail or fax them a diagram of your garden or deck, they'll recommend a system and sell you everything you need. I suspect you'll need something like this: a filter and pressure regulator; 1/2" "mainline" tubing to circle the rail or floor of your deck; 1/4" tubing leading from the mainline to each of your planters; one or two emitters for each pot; fittings for the mainline corners; a male hose end and cap; a female hose start and plug; tools and connectors; and some extras. They're very easy to set up once you get the hang of it. I would suggest a timer, too, and a "Y" hose adapter with shutoff valves so that you can attach another hose to the same faucet.

Melissa, It is very easy and very cheap to take a PVC water line out to the areas of the yard where you need a faucet. That way you can hook the hose up in different parts of the yard. The task seems daunting if you have never done it before, but if you ask someone in a plumbing store they can show you how easy it is. I have 3 different faucets that I put in a couple of years ago and they really make life easier. I plan on putting in a couple more pretty soon but haven't had the time yet. You would have to rent a ditch witch to dig the trench to lay the PVC in but they are not expensive to rent. I live on 2 acres and have plants in about 7 different areas, pretty much spanning the property on all 4 sides and in between. I have drip irrigation on all of those plants. It's really 7 different drip systems. That way I just drag the hose to the section I want watered and hook it up and turn it on. Some of the sections are established now and only get watered once or twice a year. But it's nice to be able to hook the hose to the drip system and then go into the house where the air conditioning is! It doesn't cost that much if you buy the right parts to begin with. If money is really tight then just do the drip for the areas you will be watering the most often this summer. Then next summer you may have a different area that gets the most water and you can buy a new system for that area or add on to the old one. Rosefolly, If the parts were coming apart then you bought the wrong brand. I've bought almost every brand and some of them are very good and some are VERY BAD. Can I recomend a product on here or is it against the rules? I guess I'll recomend anyway. Mr. Landscaper brand is the best for 1/2" tubing and the connectors that hook the 1/2" tubing together. Mr. Landscaper is also best for the 1/4" tubing. DIG brand is the best for the Pressure Compensating drippers. They also sell the connectors for the 1/4" tubing. Around here Lowe's sells Mr. Landscaper and Home Depot sells DIG. The DIG products are much cheaper if bought on line. I can promise you that Mr. Landscaper tubing will not allow the drippers or connectors to pop off! Email me if you have any questions about that. Carrie

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.

Nate, No one can tell you how to water or when to water, but what you should know is that you cannot water on a schedule because you have no idea, day to day or week to week, what sort of rainfall Mother Nature will, or won't, send your way. If you set yourself up to water for an hour a day every other day, maybe that will work....but maybe it won't. The plants' watering needs vary too much to be put on a strict schedule. Everyone's watering routine will vary, based on many things: how much rain is or isn't falling, how hot it is and how much the heat is evaporating the moisture out of the soil or how fast the plants are transpiring moisture, etc. Different kinds of soil absorb and hold water differently. Clay soils, once wet, can hold water a long time, making it unnecessary to water them for a while, while sandy/silty soils may absorb the water better but then they also dry out more quickly. So, you have to tailor your watering scheme to the specific kind of soil you have as well as to how much water your plants are getting from rainfall. You cannot water by a schedule or by some sort of plan. It would be nice if somebody could say "water at 5 gpm for 90 minutes a day every third day in June, but increase it to 90 minutes every second day in July..." but real life doesn't work that way. No one, not you and not us, knows if you'll be getting 6" of rainfall in June or 1", and only you can watch your soil and see how quickly it dries out after receiving rain or after a set irrigation period. I don't even water my sandy soil areas at the same rate that I water my heavily-amended clay loam areas. You have to do what Ponderpaul and Larry both said....water according to whenever the plants need to be watered. You know, small tomato plants that are a foot tall in April have certain watering needs, but plants that are 6' tall and loaded with ripening tomatoes in June have entirely different needs. There is no cut-and-dried formula. You merely have to check your soil and water when it is dry. You can use a moisture meter (I saw some of them on the seed racks at Lowe's last week) or you can stick your finger down into the soil to see how dry or wet it is. With tomatoes, it is important that the soil be kept evenly moist. If you let the soil fluctuate back and forth from dry to wet you likely will have issues with blossom end rot. And, to be clear, moist soil is good and is desirable. Soggy, wet soil is not as it can lead to root problems and diseases. Also, tomatoes that are overwatered as the fruit ripens often have poor flavor, so you don't want to overwater your plants and have nothing but poorly flavored fruit as a result. If you have tomatoes growing in containers, once you have them set up in the containers and have set up a drip line system, you can put it on a timer. In fact, you likely will need to because containers may need to be watered during the day on a hot summer day while you are at work. Even when you put a drip system on a timer for your containers, you shouldn't just set it up and walk away and forget it. You need to check your container soil every day and make sure it is getting wet enough but also not getting too wet. I try to put containers on a dripline that are all the same size and are filled with a similar mix so that they have the same basic watering needs, but I have to watch the soil because some tomato plants suck up a lot more water than others. That is to be expected because some tomato plants still will get 6 to 8' tall in containers and will drink a lot of water, what smaller determinate or ISI types stay smaller and don't need as much water. I run emitters every few inches through most my beds and try to water the whole bed evenly. Here's why. If I had tomato plants 4' apart and only put emitters 1' away from each plant on either side or all 4 sides or whatever, then the soil that is farther away from the emitters would get dry and could, can and will wick away moisture from the wetter soil adjacent to it. So, you need to evenly water the whole bed to avoid the wicking effect. I also water the beds evenly because I companion plant smaller plants in the same beds. With practice and experience you'll figure out how your soil holds and releases moisture, and you'll be able to customize your watering accordingly. However, you cannot expect it to remain constant throughout the growing season. Take into account plant size, heat, evaporation and transpiration rates, the needs of plants loaded heavily with fruit, etc. Your plants needs will vary from year to year. In 2010 we had great rainfall in my county---almost 50" at our house and I barely had to water at all. In 2003, we had 19" of rain and I had to water a lot more. What worked in one year will not work in another year with different conditions, so you have to be flexible and constantly experiment to learn what works for your garden in your soil with your weather and with whatever stage your plants are at during that period. It sounds harder than it is. Check your soil (I suggest using a moisture meter). When the soil is drying out, water it. When it is moist, don't water until it dries out some. What matters is not so much what system you use or how many emitters you use (as long as you use enough of them at a rate that moistens all the soil evenly). What matters is that you give the plants adequate moisture when they need it and otherwise leave them alone. I have found more people overwater than underwater. It is part of a phenomenon commonly referred to as "loving your plants to death". I can tell that you are giving a great deal of thought and putting a lot of effort into doing everything right this year. That is admirable. However, you cannot garden "by a formula or a schedule". You have to garden intuitively, from your heart as well as from your brain. Trust yourself to check the soil, decide if it feels too wet, too dry or "just right", and be willing to make adjustments week to week or even day to day. Taking care of a garden is a lot like taking care of a newborn child. Everyone tells you what to expect, what to do, how to do it, etc. But, every child is different and every garden is different. My son was a light eater who never wanted to finish the amount of formula that "they" (the pediatrician, the books, the magazines, etc.) said a newborn child should drink. Nor did he particularly want to eat on a regular schedule. He wanted to eat when he was ready to eat, not when my clock said he ought to eat. My nephew was the opposite. He wanted to have the amount that the experts said he should, plus a whole lot more. He was hungry all the time. If you tried to feed him on a strict schedule, he threw a fit because he was hungry now! He needed more food and he needed it when he was hungry. What worked with my son did not work with my sister's son. Yet, both grew just fine and were happy and healthy. So, remember that with your garden---its needs are unique to it and may not be the same as what my garden, or Larry's or Ponderpaul's or anyone else's garden's needs are. Just focus on giving it what it needs when it needs it, and only you can observe it and figure out what those needs are and how to meet them. That is part of the mystery of gardening. This month we start our 15th year here in Oklahoma, and I have not done things the exact same way in any 2 years because each year throws different variables into the mix. It keeps life, and gardening, interesting, and is part of the challenge of being a gardener. Dawn