2 February 2012

Flexible Vegie Bed Irrigation

With the onset of hot weather, we've been busy putting irrigation systems in to keep all our young plants happy and healthy.  For most of the permanent seedlings, we used pipe laid along the ground with drippers to each plant, but our vegie patch seemed to warrant something special...

Eventually we're planning to have a more structured vegie garden in this area, with about 10 beds of dimensions 2.4x1.0m each, and paving around each bed for easy access.

With this in mind, we cut 20 poles at 2.4m long from our supply of pine saplings (felled late last year).  Each bed will have 2-3 poles spaced about 30-50cm apart, for 2-3 rows of seedlings with drippers spaced 30cm apart.

The rods are designed so that we can screw them together in whatever formation we like, or take them apart to put away if we need.  Some rods have drippers (good for sturdy vegies like capsicums and corn), and some have sprayers (good for carrots and other more delicate seedlings).

Here's what our test rods looked like (the finished rods have 3 pieces of wire inserted through drilled holes and bent in half, so that we can push them into the soil to keep the rods off the ground):

Once we got the test rods working properly, it was all systems go!  Needless to say, it was a bit of a production line between the two of us....

Here's what we used per rod:

1 x 2.4m pine rod

1 x 2.4m length of 13mm irrigation pipe

8 x drippers

5 x cable ties to secure pipe to rod

1 x 1.2m length of hose

4 x 13mm hose clamps

1 x 13mm elbow joint

2 x screw-together hose fittings

3 x 80cm lengths of wire

 

Some rods have garden hose connectors on the end - these are for the start of the sequence.  And we also made a few end stopper connections, for the end of the sequence.

So... what's the verdict?  So far so good, much less time-consuming than hand-watering, and much more water efficient than using large sprinklers.  And... the plants all seem really happy!