Drip Irrigation Secrets of a Professional Grower

Reader Contribution by David Baldwin and The Natural Gardening Company

No matter where you live, whatever your climate, you and your garden can benefit from drip irrigation. Long considered a virtual necessity in the arid climate of California and the southwest, gardeners in regions that receive summer rain know that rain does not fall at regular intervals throughout the growing season.  Droughts can occur anywhere, and with the cost of municipal water going ever upward, water conservation is a must. Drip irrigation is the most reliable, efficient, environmentally sound method of watering available to today’s gardeners and growers.

Setting Up A Drip Irrigation System

Setting up a drip irrigation system is not that much different than assembling tinker toys: you connect water lines in geometric patterns using connectors in the shape of L’s and T’s. The most basic garden plan, a row or series of rows, is ideal for drip irrigation. There are two basic schemes for drip irrigation with row crops: single rows or double rows. While single row systems are easier to assemble, double row plans make more efficient use of space because they reduce the amount of space devoted to pathways but still allow easy access to your plantings from either side. You can also use a combination of the two, as we do, depending on the crops you grow.

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