Installing Drip Irrigation in Vegetable Garden | A Beginners Guide to Drip Irrigation

Hello, welcome back as I help new

garden

ers. I try not to recommend that you buy a bunch of products just to get started with your

garden

; In fact, there are only a few things I consider essential to having a successful garden here in the desert, but one thing I always encourage gardeners to invest in is a

drip

irrigation

system with an automatic timer. Having a

drip

irrigation

system set up correctly can not only reduce your stress but can also help you be much more successful in your garden if you have never installed a drip irrigation system or maybe you don't even know what it is.

You are in the right place. In today's video, I'll discuss some common types of drip irrigation products, explain how they work, and even show you how to plan and set up your own drip irrigation system for your garden. Keep this in the garden. Setting up a drip irrigation system is much easier than

installing

something like sprinklers for long drip irrigation. In fact, it can be attached directly to your hose bib and makes it really easy to install. You can vary it if you want, but you don't even have to if you can install everything completely above the ground and that makes it really easy for anyone to install.

This at home, if you go to your local home improvement store or even shop online, you will find a lot of different drip irrigation products. It may seem overwhelming, but it's actually not that bad once you know what you really are. you're going to need in your garden, so today I'm going to show you some of the most common things you should buy and that you can use to set up your drip irrigation system in your garden. The main part of your drip irrigation system will be the tubing, this is how the water will get from your tap to your garden.

There are several different sizes, but there are basically two sizes that you will use in your garden. You will use a large size and a small size. The large size can be 1/2 inch or 3/8 inch and the small size is usually 1/4 inch. For the large size, it doesn't matter if you use 1/2 inch or 3/8 inch, it's whatever. They have everything you want to buy, but whatever size you decide on, you'll want to make sure you use it throughout your garden so that all your accessories and everything else fit correctly and this is what you're going to do. Use it for the main part of your drip irrigation system in your garden.

This is what will get your tap water and bring it back to your garden and your entire garden. The smallest size tube, 1/4 inch, is what you need. If you are going to attach to get to each individual plant, you can think of it as a neighborhood where you have large water lines buried in the street and then each house has a smaller water line that runs up to the house if each of your plants It was a house and then the main pipe runs down the street. You're just trying to get it into the general area of ​​your plants and then you'll use your smaller quarter-inch tube to get to each individual plant. small drip emitter heads are what you are going to use to water your plants.

These go on the ends of all the tubes, right where your plant is. They come in different sizes and by sizes I mean they let a different amount of water through. They are measured in gallons per hour and range from half a gallon per hour to a gallon or two gallons, and there are probably larger ones than that for your home garden. You can probably use the same size on all of your plants. What I do is I use the same size throughout my garden and then if one plant needs more water than another, I put two drippers on that plant instead of mixing different sizes of drippers and having to keep track of which one is each size. .

It has standard drip emitters and these simply connect directly to the end of your quarter inch tubing and it will simply drip every time the system is running. You will also find quarter inch connectors, these are the ones you will use to connect your quarter inch. inch pipe to the largest pipe in your garden, these types of connectors also come in tees so you can connect more than one quarter inch pipe to the same connector. There are additional things like bubblers and other types of drip heads, they even make misters and small sprinklers, but you don't want to use those in your garden.

If you watched my video on how to properly water your garden, you will know that spraying directly onto the leaves of the plant is not the best way, so you will want to avoid any type of sprinklers or sprinklers or any of those types of drip system parts, They also make what is called a silly plug. When you're putting together your system, there's a good chance you'll cut a hole in your big tube in a place where you really didn't intend to have one or maybe you changed your mind and they made these little plugs that are called dumb plugs and you can just put them in. anywhere there is a hole that you didn't actually make. want or where you've moved something, so it's good to have them on hand in case you end up needing to fix the mistake you don't want.

This is an adapter to connect your drip system to your hose faucet. a standard hose threaded screw and the other end is a compression fitting, the compression fitting would connect to the large size of your tube and you would simply push it in until it is fully snug against the top. These come in different varieties, some of them are compression only or this one has a small screw that you can use to make sure it's tight. You will also need a pressure reducer and that will go between your faucet and your connector. You're going to reduce the pressure on your drip system so things don't break.

The water pressure in your home is too high for your drip irrigation system and the fittings, because they are just compression fittings, they can break under high pressure. If you want to make sure you have that pressure reducer installed on your drip system, you will see many accessories like this. This is a tee, but they also make couplers that allow you to join two pieces of pipe together. This will allow you to divide, make some that are elbows so you can go around the corners. There are many different ones, so you just need to think about how you are going to design your garden and which ones you are going to actually need and just buy them. the ones are the same size as the two you are using this is a shut off valve and can be installed directly in line you will cut the tubing and install the tubing on each side of this and then if you need to shut off an area or your entire system, you can use this and just turn it to the side and it will shut off the flow to that area.

These are good to have if you have different areas in your garden where you may want to water one more than another or you have a certain type of plant in one area. This is just a splitter that can be attached to your hose bib and will allow you to connect drip irrigation to one side and still have your garden hose connected to the other side. This is really useful and you don't have to keep disconnecting and reconnecting things to be able to use your hose or water your garden. There are many different tools you can purchase to use.

For your drip irrigation system, I think there are only two you really need and these are the two I have. One is a hole punch tool and they come in many different varieties but one like this actually crimps into the tube when you make the hole, this is actually my favorite type and is much easier to use than some of the others so I would definitely recommend investing in a hole punch similar to this one and then also just a tube cutter, this is just a simple cutter so you can cut the tube. This works on both sizes, the largest size and the small size, so you only need one cutter for the entire system.

The last product I want to talk about is the timer. Timers come in a wide variety, from cheap small mechanical timers to battery-operated ones and ones you need to wire into your home. I recommend just buying a cheap battery operated timer and there are a few different varieties that work well, one of which I use for many. years is this one, you can see it is very loved, it just has these dials, you set it for how long you want it to run, how many intervals between each run and it also has an option that if you want to turn it on manually for a few minutes at a time, you can do that too , so it works very well.

All of these types of timers simply screw directly onto the hose bib and then you connect the drip system to the other end. They are really simple to install, no gluing, no cutting of pipes and nothing like that. These are really simple, like a plug-and-play option for your drip system. A timer like this is considered an analog timer because it has these knobs. You'll just set it where you want it to be and then it will run. It works very well. I was very happy with this one. This is a range ripper and worked great for a long time.

It finally broke. He probably has. I've been using it for six or seven years and it finally wore out and I invested in a new one. The new one I invested in is actually a digital timer. It works pretty much the same way except it has a digital touch panel inside where you can configure your settings that way, but it's basically the same concept: you set how long you want it to run, when you want it to run, you can turn it on manually, You can turn it off if it's raining and you don't need it to run it. everything, but this is also a good option, the same way if your hose screws move to one side and then you can connect your drip system to the other side now that I've gone over each of the products a little bit.

I'm going to explain to you how you need to plan your drip irrigation system before you go out and buy anything before you start

installing

anything you need to really plan pre-planning is key to having a good drip irrigation system in your garden. First you need to think about where your water source is, where the hose connection is or how it is going to be connected to get the water to your drip system. Once you know where your water source is, you need to plan how you are going to get there. the water from there to your garden and then also to your entire garden, that is where you should think about using the largest size pipe that you need to get from the hose connection to your garden and then to your entire garden, when I say to Throughout your garden, I basically mean from one end to the other or in each area, you're not going to use this oversized tube to get to each individual plant, so you're just trying to get to the general area of ​​all your plants. plants in my garden.

You can see behind me here. I have the tube that comes from my hose bib, it goes into my garden here and then I run the large size tube through a line to the end which gives me a source of water for my entire garden and then I use the small one. tubes to connect to each individual plant, so you need to think about your garden layout, even writing it down on paper, making a drawing is really helpful, if you draw it on paper you can see the shape of your garden where things are. and you want to plan the shortest distance to use this large tube to run around your garden, not only is it more expensive to put more tubes all over the place, it is wasteful, it reduces pressure, it will make your system less efficient, so I really want to think about how you are going to get water to your plants in the shortest distance possible.

Also think about areas where you might need to bury the pipe in my yard. I have a walkway right here, so I want to make sure that no one I'm going to trip over it, it won't get damaged, so from the hose bib I bury it in the ground and it comes out and comes back to the surface of my garden, now that's it. makes it safe, no one will trip over it, the dogs. You won't damage it because it's not a high pressure line and it's not permanently installed. You don't need to bury it feet under the ground.

You can just bury it a few inches lower or even if you have a cover of rock or mulch. You can even bury it under that and that will be good enough to keep it from getting damaged or prevent someone from tripping over it. If you have a raised bed, a good tip is to bury it in the raised bed and really dig it up. under the side of the bed so it can go in without having to cover the side of the bed, like when doing something with woodworking or any type of crafts, you should always make sure you have measured correctly before you start cutting, but just make sure you Pre-plan how you want to build it before you start doing it, so I went over some of the products with you and explained that you need to make sure you plan your irrigation system beforehand. you start installing, if you've done that, you're ready to go out and start putting it in your garden, so now I'm going to show you how to put these different things in and install them in your garden first thing we do.

What we are going to do is connect our system to the hose bib. The first piece I like to put in is the timer. You are going to connect the timer directly to the hose bib. You want to make sure it's tight in there so it doesn't have any leaks before you continue you want to make sure the timer is off and then turn the water on and make sure it doesn't have any leaks if you're going to install a splitter to be ableof connecting your garden hose you would also want to put this before the timer so make sure you install this and then timer 2 1 on this and your garden hose can go to the other one.

For this example, I'm not going to install that, so I won't put it here. The next part will be putting together the actual pieces that are going to connect to the timer. You need to connect the hose adapter piece to your large size tube. To do this, you will simply place it and push. Put it in until you can't push it in any further and on this particular one it has this screw piece so I could screw it in to make sure it's tighter and you'll want to pull on it and make sure it doesn't come off again next.

You will want to install the pressure reducing coupling, this will allow the pressure to not be too high for your drip system. This is really important. You must make sure not to leave this part that you are going to install. this right into your timer again, make sure it's really tight and snug so you don't have any wires inside your fixture. You should also have one of these screens. This is important as it prevents small particles from entering your drip system. Drip emitter heads have small holes and can become clogged very easily with even a little bit of material in there, so this screen will help make sure nothing gets into your drip system.

You will also want to make sure that all washers are installed on all of these parts. All of these pieces should have a rubber washer and that will ensure that it seals well and that you don't end up leaking once you've gone through all of that and you have all the washers, your coupling is installed. You are ready to install this adapter directly onto the pressure reducer. This is what your final configuration should look like. Yours will look different, obviously, if your hose is configured differently. Mine is at a weird angle, so it sticks out to the sides, but you.

You will have your timer, your pressure reducer, and then your fitting to connect your hose to the system. After connecting it to your hose bib you will run the large pipe throughout your garden like you see in my garden. I just ran. It goes down the center and runs through my entire garden to the end and at the other end I cover it. Once you've run your large line throughout your garden, you'll be ready to install the quarter-inch line on each individual plant in today's planting. For example, I'm going to put a quarter inch line on this bell pepper plant right here.

The first thing you'll want to do is determine where on the big line you want to connect and then you'll use your hole. drilling tool and you are going to make a hole in the side of the tube towards the plant you are going to, as you can see. I made the hole on this side towards the plant, the next thing you are going to do is measure. Pull out your 3/4 inch line to the length you want. Remember I said you want to have more in case you need to adjust things later, so you'll measure from that hole and then to wherever you need. whatever and then add a few extra inches and then you'll just cut it out using your cutting tool.

One thing I want to mention is that you need to be very careful not to dirty any of the parts of your drip system while installing it, small pieces of sand, rock or dirt can clog an emitter and it will not work properly, so you need to have plenty of Be careful when moving the tubes and everything you can. You will not drag them through the ground where they will fill up with things. Next, you will use one of the quarter-inch adapter couplings to attach it to the end of one end of the quarter-inch pipe and connect it. "You're just going to put it in and push it in.

Make sure you push it all the way in until it hits the big piece where it stops. Now you're going to connect this other end of that connector to the big tube that you have." We'll do it the same way, just push it in until it's completely flush against the large piece. You will now install the drip emitter on the other end of the quarter inch tube. It will install it the same way. The way you made the connector, just push it in until it's stuck to the big part. Now you are ready to place it on your plant.

You can use one of these little clips that will clip onto the tube and then attach to the side of your plant. plant to place it where you want it to be, as I mentioned in my watering video, you want to make sure you water at the base of the plant in the root zone, so you want to make sure you place this near the root of the plant, not you're going to put it very far away where the water will never reach the plant, you'll want to make sure you put it nearby if you didn't watch that video on how to water your plants, make sure you go back and watch it, it has a lot of good information on the proper way to water your plants, that's it, once you have it installed, that plant is ready to go, your system is all installed, you have a drip line for each individual plant.

The last thing you need to do before using it is to flush the system. The last thing you should do before using your drip system is to rinse it. To do this, simply open the end, whatever the type of end. The lid that you put on the end after you run it through your garden you're going to open it or the UNHCR will prevent it however it's set up and you're just going to leave it open on the ground and then you're going to Go and turn the system on once you've run it for a few seconds, it will just make sure nothing is working inside it again and then close it again to make sure there are no contaminants.

There are no pieces of gravel, rock or dirt on the line that could clog one of your emitters, so you'll have a lot less problems with it now that you have everything set up. Go ahead and try to test it and make sure everything is there. it works I hope you learned something from this video and learned a little about drip irrigation systems. If you enjoyed it, be sure to hit the like button and check out more content like this to help you succeed in your backyard garden. Make sure you subscribe so you can receive all my latest videos.

Thanks for watching them. Have a good video.