Sprinkling

[canesisters]

I just bought soakers for the straw bales. They are so much smaller diameter than the ones I used to get. Gheesh. I don't have a pressure reducer, is that something that goes between the spigot and hose @majorcatfish ?

I usually use sprinklers for the garden just for the convenience aspect. But it does make all the weeds happy.

How far is the SBG from the spigot? Maybe you could use the hose to fill a rain barrel and then run the soaker off gravity feed from the barrel? Almost no pressure then.
I have almost 100' from the house to the SBG AND I'm on well water. By the time it gets way over there, there's no real pressure to speak of.

 

[bobm]

On my Cal. ranch, our yard around our house covers 2 acres ... I installed 4 control valves for an underground 1/2" PVC lines for individual 1/2 and 1 gal. / min drip system for about 200 trees and shrubs. I can turn on the valves 6 am in the morning and shut them off at 8pm once a week for the summer and fall months. I have done this for over 15 years. The ranch is in the high desert of central Cal. with an anual average rainfall of 9" occuring from late Nov. to March.

 

[ducks4you]

I have two of the older drip hoses, 5/8" diameter and we are using them to water the newly tilled spaces at my DD's new (100yo) house's yard. One even cracked 5 ft. from it's end. I will be sealing that soon with Flexseal. They work just fine, and it's fun to watch the water work it's way down the hoses.
Although a GREAT DEAL OF WORK, you may consider putting in a subsurface drip irrigation system. I forgot WHO here has one, but I saw an AG program interview of the record SC corn producer and this farmer has subsurface watering. He ONLY plants corn every year and he mixes all nutrients into the watering system. Corn is the heaviest feeder crop, right behind tobacco. It is amazing, probably running him some serious $'s for several hundred acres, BUT, once it's in, it's in for years, and it's paying for itself. You wouldn't need to spend a lot of money, but the time and effort digging would buff you up. Talk to JackB about how he feeds his greenhouse plants with an irrigation system, too.
http://www.hometips.com/diy-how-to/lawn-drip-irrigation-subsurface.html

 

[digitS']

lucky me a couple years ago i found a couple streets over during a yard sale one of those 55 gallon blue plastic containers, got it for $5. i haven't had to use the water it was collecting the past couple years & it is still full. but some cities have put out notice that there will be some rationing going into effect till there is more rain. i want to get more of those barrels if i could find them cheap. i did see someone a couple weeks ago had some for $10 each but i think those got bought up quickly.

Here's a problem with any water storage system - limited size.

There are 231 cubic inches in a gallon. Sounds like a lot but there are 1728 cubic inches in a cubic foot. Whoa!

Okay, there are 144 square inches in a square foot of garden. If you want to put an inch of water on it, you have used much of that gallon. Don't need 1" of water? Let's say 1/2" of irrigation ... your gallon will cover just over 3 square feet.

If you have a 900 square foot family garden, you will need about 300 gallons of water. With barrels of 55 gallon size ... better have at least 5.

Steve

 

[Nyboy]

With 5 barrels it would take a lot of rain to keep full

 

[majorcatfish]

one of these days need to put a water meter on the hose bib at the well just to see how much is used over a growing season..

a house that is 24x72 has 1728 sqft of roof you have lot of collection area for rain.....

 

[digitS']

I am a little surprised about the problems some gardeners have with irrigation. The entire US West has a Mediterranean climate. The northern boundary ends in southern WA, if I remember right but it really reaches up here if we only consider the growing season. Characteristic is that most precipitation falls during the winter.

Here, the average rainfall for the months of summer: less than 2 inches. Humidity makes a difference to plant stress. It falls below 20% every summer afternoon. (Except yesterday when we had a shower of rain and it stayed at 50% !)

"Drought" has to do with averages and falling below them. I imagine that a drought is locally catastrophic when native flora require 20" through the 3 months of summer and gets only 10". Okay, that would be very bad there but an unheard of wet summer here.

Maybe the entire country around here is set up for these conditions. You want to grow something other than wheat, use irrigation. I'm putting down 3/4" to 1" of water twice a week. Have I already said it? During the summer months, it would be best to have about 1/2" to 3/4", 3 times each week ... on the rockiest soil this side of the Rockies! Generally, I can't schedule irrigation that often.

The water pressure is there, I suppose because it is needed. I broke the last of my lighter weight rainbird sprinkler stands, recently. I run two on the little veggie garden easily, too easily. Watched too far from the valve to get it shut off, or race to put my custom concrete block on the feet of the stand. It fell over backwards because of the water pressure! Distance in "hose feet" from that valve: 275 feet. My feet don't travel that fast ... I need better foresight . Broken plastic fitting can be replaced ...

Steve