Irrigation Options for Garden

There are three irrigation options for your garden:

1. By Hand

Watering by hand is a great option if you’re willing and able to do it every day. It might be the best way to water because you are getting outside to interact with your garden every day, and you have the ability see how much water your garden needs day to day. Giving it more attention will make it more successful. The downside is if you go on long vacations or are unsure if you will be consistent at watering.

2. Grass Sprinklers

The sprinklers watering your bluegrass can also water your garden if your bed is in the middle of the yard. The downside of this is that your grass is most likely only watered 2-3x per week for a long period of time. Your garden should be watered more frequently, with much less water. The days your sprinklers aren’t on, you may have to supplementally hand water.

3. Drip Irrigation

• Connected to An Existing Drip Line–

We can connect to an existing drip irrigation line in the landscaping. The disadvantage is that it will be on the same zone as perennial plants that may want to get watered twice a week for 30 minutes, when the garden may need to be watered every day for a couple minutes. Landscape plants won’t suffer, but it will be less versatile for your gardens needs.

• Drip Irrigation Connected to Your House’s Spigot—

When your drip is connected to your house, we put a Y Valve, Timer, and Pressure Reducer onto your house spigot and connect the drip irrigation line to there. Your garden is watered directly from your house faucet. The timers are great because you can more easily control the time and settings and you don’t have to worry about your garden if you go out of town. Sometimes we encounter leaky or loud spigots that prevent us from connecting timers to the house until they are fixed.

• Running a Line Out of the Bed and “Stubbing It”–

We can run a line out of the bed and “stub” it (end the line, and leave it with duct tape to be connected later). This allows a landscape/irrigation company to come and connect to the line, ideally on a new and separate “zone” so that you have most ease in controlling the water for your raised beds. Or, you can run a hose to the location and screw it into the stubbed line.

• Connecting to a sprinkler head in the area–

We can connect to an existing sprinkler system by connecting to the sprinkler head and adding a pressure reducer. We typically avoid this option unless it’s very straight-forward, and it is ok for the entire sprinkler zone to run every day for just a few minutes. Most bluegrass needs more water than that, so the gardener must be ok with prioritizing the water for the garden instead of the sprinkler zone.

Irrigation options for the garden can be a bit tricky, but get it right and avoid a headache later. And we’re happy to help troubleshoot whenever we can!

Once you have your system set up, learn how to water your garden here!