At this time of year, when not day-dreaming of being immersed in

a spring-fed watering hole, I am often thinking of the best ways to

keep all of my lovely plants alive.

 

As gardeners we must try our hardest to conserve as much of our

precious water for our landscapes as possible. Drip irrigation, without

question, is the best way to accomplish this.  

 

The traditional approach has been to use hoses and sprinklers. Then

along came the high-tech underground systems with their automatic

timers, pop-up sprinklers and rotors. All of these simply throw water

in the air in the hope that some of it might benefit the turf, flower-

beds and plants that it lands on.

 

Drip irrigation, however, is a focused technique that supplies the

right amount of water directly to the plant’s base. Plants love it, and

will show their gratitude by flourishing through these hot summer

months.

 

To set up a drip system, connect a soft poly pipe to your water faucet,

and run the pipe along the soil surface.  The next step is to punch

‘emitters’ into this pipe at the base of each plant. Gardeners often use

mulch to cover the pipe and emitters to further conserve moisture.

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Some other benefits of drip irrigation:

1. You save water (and therefore money) since there’s no evaporative

loss to the air. It all goes directly to the plants.

2. Water is added to the soil slowly. This reduces and often elim-

inates water loss due to run off.

3. Weeds don’t get watered as much.

4. Plant diseases, like powdery mildew, are kept at a minimum

because foliage is kept dry.

5. Water can be tailored to individual plant needs. Water loving

plants can be given more by adding extra emitters, while xeri-

scape plants have less.

6. Best of all, drip irrigation is easy to install for both existing flower

beds and vegetable gardens. Often there is no trenching and existing

automatic systems can be adapted easily.

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When we combine drip irrigation with native and adaptive plant

species, we can then all make the very best use of water… our most

precious resource.

                                        Happy Gardening everyone!