When the summer starts, pretty much every person who has a garden has a problem with the temperatures. Most of the plants don’t have the appropriate means of dealing with the heat. Therefore, the owner needs to provide them with some kind of help before it’s too late. It goes without saying that the best way of fighting these temperatures is to install a garden irrigation system. Your plants will need consistent watering for them to be as durable as you want them to be. However, installing a garden irrigation system is not an easy task.
In fact, it should be said that there is much more to it than it meets the eye. Therefore, the owner needs to have careful planning about the whole concept. At the same time, we can see that watering is for much more than helping plants cope with the heat. Water is essential for every plant for it to be as healthy as it can be. Of course, there are some tips you can face water waste. If you are interested in avoiding water waste, be sure to read more. Now, we would like to provide you with a couple of tips you can use for planning a garden irrigation system. Without further ado, let’s begin.
Start Small but Don’t Forget About Expansion
When you come up with an idea about installing a garden irrigation system, you will need to think about the actual size of the system. Certainly, we wouldn’t recommend you to make a huge system at first. Chances are that you will see that this capacity is too much for your garden, and you can receive a completely different result from what you’ve hoped for. Therefore, we would recommend you to start small, but to have in mind that your system will expand in the future. It would be best for your garden to start small as well. That way, you will be able to grow your system at the same time, and you will receive no bad results whatsoever.
Find a Quality Water Source
One of the most important things you need to think about before you conduct in building a garden irrigation system is to find a quality water source. As you can imagine, plants need proper quality water to be as healthy as they can be. Naturally, we can see that there is a chance that the source you will find will not be as good as it should be. Therefore, you need to think about installing a filtering system. Plus, you can think about adjusting the pH of the water in question. Surely, these changes will solely depend on your plants’ needs. Therefore, you will need to learn much more about them than you know now.
Think About Field Elevation
Many people don’t know that field elevation actually plays a major role in the success of the garden irrigation system. It plays a crucial role in what the size of the system will be and what kind of water flow you will be able to use. For example, if you have a 2.3-foot change in your elevation, you will be able to receive one pound of water pressure, if we are talking about a downhill direction, of course. At the same time, we can see that the system can lose one pound if we are talking about the uphill direction. Last but not least, we would like to say that the pipes included in your system will have their own needs. Usually, we are talking about distance, water flow rate, and topography.
Drip System Automation
We can see that the majority of garden owners don’t really think about automating their drip system. Naturally, there are a lot of things they need to do before they can call this automation successful. We can see that the effectiveness really depends on the size of the system. For example, we can see that in some cases split your system into two different zones can be pretty much the only thing you can do to make them more effective. Not only that, maybe you will need to do that in case you have different crops in different parts of the field. As you can presume, not every plant needs the same amount of water, and some extra amount can damage the plant.
Install Rainwater Harvesters
As we’ve already mentioned, the quality of water that goes through your irrigation system needs to be of top-notch quality. At the same time, your system will not be as successful if you spend too much water on your plants. Therefore, you need to think about installing rainwater harvesters. By installing them, you can collect all the rain and recycle it into the water you can freely use for watering your plants. Just think about that, the water you can collect can be of great help. Otherwise, it would just go down the drain. As we’ve mentioned, we are not talking only about the cost-effective method. Your plants will be able to use much better water, you can be sure of that.
DIY or Buy the System
Last but not least, we would like to talk about the possibility of creating your own system or to buy the whole system. There are both upsides and downsides to both of these approaches. If you choose to create it all on your own, you will be required to invest a lot of time and patience on your behalf. However, you will be able to make it in exactly the proportion you need for your garden. When we are talking about buying a complete system, you will be able to save the amount of time that you would invest in creating your own. But you will need to invest a certain amount of money into it. Basically, it all depends on what kind of investment you are prepared to make.
Last Thoughts
Nobody said that planning a garden irrigation system is easy. There are so many things you need to consider before you can actually start working on it. Here, we’ve provided you with the most important tips you can use to make your system as effective as you would like it to be