Modular scalable drip watering system; and more fruit plants

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Today was exciting. Last week I saw a commercial modular watering system where the hoses only watered on the beds and used regular hose to bring water to the beds. Today I thought, “Let me build this myself.”

The system I put together uses the same concept, with sections of garden hose connected to drip hoses using splitters and hose patch connectors. I spent about $160 to buy all the hardware (4 drip hoses, Y-splitters, male/female hose-end patch kits, incl. the original hose I bought some months ago) and it took under two hours to set up. So now all I have to do to water the beds is turn the faucet on at the source.

For the trees and the fruit bushes I will still water them by hand until I can figure out a way to slice up lengths of drip hose and patch them in to garden hose so that I can just have 1-2 foot lengths of drip hose over the bushes and trees that I want to water, and regular garden hose between.

Needs a bit of hand strength to get the adapter in the hose and the lock in over it. Put the lock before the adapter. 😉 But this is the basic principle: cut the hose to the lengths that I need and use repair kits to connect them.

 

First split from the source: Bottom hose leads to the first garden, the other section feeds in to more beds down the slope. I would like to fit in a section of drip hose for the tree, too.

 

Garden hose switches over to drip hose. I hope the water output here is enough to get a deep soak over a few hours. I should probably put grass clippings over the exposed drip hose.

 

Second splitter feeding water into the raised beds, and sending water to nearby walking bed.

 

Water split from raised bed goes to the walking bed; split again to send water down the slope to the spray nozzle.

While putting this system together, I did notice a few trouble spots and I’m sharing my lessons learned.

  • Ends of the hoses need to be patched tightly and require physical strength to get them on
  • If any of the flow valves are closed and the hose feeding in to it isn’t patched all the way, it’ll pop off (pressure)
  • Drip hoses rely on water pressure to force water out of the pores. The drip hoses lose pressure if I have the end of the system open (using the hose to fill a bucket, for example)
  • Leaks at the joins occur if I don’t put rubber washers in
  • Need to pay attention to gravity and slope of the land in relation to the water coming through the pipes. A drip hose will struggle to leak out water if there is a significant dip in the garden hose feeding in to it, which will cause the water going to the drip hose to gurgle and make a choking sound (insufficient pressure)
  • Drip hose should generally be kept as level as possible for that section

However, the upside is that I can leave the system going for 1-2 hours. It does remain to be seen whether these drip hoses are sufficient or I need to add more drip hoses to each bed to maintain good water content in the soil.

A future update is to add a flow meter to the water source so I can keep track of how much water I am distributing to the garden over time.

New fruits added to Stardance

This area of the yard is now the “Fruit corner”

Everything in the photo I purchased today, except 2 (the raspberry I planted a few weeks ago)

  1. “Pink Lemonade Blueberry” It will pollenate with the other blueberry
  2. Gooseberry (Tried one of the fruit, it was a bit sour, but nice texture)
  3. Bush cherry (it is a bit obscured in this photo)
  4. Elderberry

I am excited to have these fruits whose fruits aren’t typically sold in stores (aside from blueberries). The gooseberry has thorns so I will have to be careful. I ate one of its fruits today, it was sour but in a good way.

 

 

 

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Modular scalable drip watering system; and more fruit plants by mehron is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

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