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Square Foot Gardening

Drip irrigation help

6 years ago

I have 3 raised beds (two 4x6, one 6x6 that is tiered) and am unsure what the best drip irrigation method to use is with square foot gardening. We already have a separate sprinkler zone set up for vegetable beds so we just need to decide on the actual watering method.

Do I weave a dripline soaker hose all willy-nilly? Make a grid system with 1/2" poly pipe and poke drip emitters directly into that? Or utilize the 1/4" spaghetti tube and have the tube spider out to each square with the mini sprayers/bubblers or drip emitters?

How do I ensure everything gets enough water such as my beets which have 9 plants per square? The grid systems seem to just have one drip emitter next to a single plant but that won't work for a square that has multiple plants in it, right?

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Comments (3)

planterjeff
6 years ago
I know it's been a while since you posted, but I figured I'd give my opinion. I think a lot of this comes down to your preference, box layouts, and plants being grown. I do not use the sprayers/bubblers in my veggie garden because I try to keep all of my plant's leaves dry for disease purposes. I have small beds 2x8 feet each so I just have an emitter set up one per square foot with 1/4 inch tubing leading to where I want the drip applied in each square. This way I can easily regulate the amount of water per square. Just for your reference a 1 gallon per hour emitter being left on around 37 minutes equates to 1 inch of rain when place one per square foot. I did the math a while back, and it should be accurate. I wouldn't mix and match, as in doing some bubblers and some drip as this may lead to uneven watering as they may not match flow. I get your point about multiple plants. I really notice the issues when it comes to carrots or the root veggies. I originally considered doing a bubbler for those squares but I think once you cover the whole area your bubbler, out flow exceeds the 1 gallon per sq foot per hour so you end up with the uneven watering I mentioned above. What I have noticed is that the single drip per foot spreads enough to water most of a square.
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kaptainkr
6 years ago
A few years ago I built a grid out of PVC pipe and use that for watering. It works beautifully and is a real time saver. I drilled holes to make sure the water is distributed evenly. Not sure if this is what you had in mind, but I'm sold. PVC watering grid
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Sorry for replying so late to you all. I worked on installing this last Tuesday and finished it up yesterday after work. I ended up putting two 1 gallon drippers on each side of each plant (about 8 to 12 inches from the stem of the plant). I am going to keep an eye on it, but I am really looking forward to not needing to water by hand anymore! I also used some drip lines for my tree and larger bushes.
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organicbackyardgardening
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Hi Lisa,

We have had great success with using dripworks raised bed kits. Even if you don't use the kits from dripworks I recommend checking out their site for various plans and planning guides. For our 8x4 raised beds we run 5 lines of 1/4 sokers that have emitters every 12" (see image below).

https://www.dripworks.com/garden-bed-irrigation-kit-small

Hope this helps. I'll be adding drip irrigation install tutorials soon at my video channel below in the near future.

Tim

www.organicbackyardgardening.com

Simple how to videos - subscribe!
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