Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Irrigating your Garden

Well I figure that I better get my above ground irrigation fixed before I plant the veggies in ground.  I refuse to water by hand.


This is my irrigation system.  I chose to do above ground because with an in ground garden you are always digging and or tilling in the soil from time to time.  The manifolds needed to be replaced because some little hairy 4 legged creature was chewing on it.  This creation of mine is hooked up to a garden hose.  On the spigot I have a hose timer.  When I leave for work in the mornings at 4:30 am, I turn on the timer for 20 minutes.  Here in the desert it is very important that I water early.  Reason is that the water in the hose heats up, and you don't want to water with hot water.


The part I have circled is a calcium inhibitor filter.  I change this out every year.  The first year I made one of these I was always splicing out my garden drip emitters because the calcium was clogging the emitters.  


That filter I got out of the area where the mister systems are sold.  It can screw onto garden hoses.  The other end of the filter screws onto a female PVC garden hose adapter.  The order I have connected all these parts is as follows.
 3' leader hose found in the garden dept. screw into the filter, screw that into a female PVC hose adapter,  

1. glue onto 4" 3/4 piece of PVC pipe                         2. glue onto 3/4" PVC Tee  
3. glue onto 8" 3/4" PVC pipe                                     4. glue onto 3/4" PVC Tee with threads for the nipple 
5. nipple screws into the Tee                                       6. 8 port manifold screws onto the nipple.  
7.Other end of Tee; glue on an 8" 3/4" PVC pipe        8.  glue a 3/4" Tee onto the PVC pipe 
9. Glue a 4" 3/4" PVC pipe into the Tee                     10. glue a 3/4" male PVC hose adapter onto the Tee, 

or if this is all you need glue a 3/4" PVC cap onto the pipe.  


(above: an 8 port manifold. They also come in 2 and 4 ports.)

On your two Tee's they will be open on the bottom.  Glue a plug into them.


In the above picture, what I have circled is from the left a female hose adapter, a shut off valve, a male PVC hose adapter.  The reason for the shut off is for those veggies once their roots are deep enough over watering starts to happen, so to avoid over watering I shut the flow of water for one day.  Th manifolds is what you attach you.  That part I will show when I put the veggies in ground.

Feel free to ask any questions below.










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