GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: drip irrigation video

Drip Irrigation for a Container Garden – GF Video

Here’s a DIY project to provide drip irrigation for a container garden, easy to do watch the video to see how.

Container gardens dry out quickly, which is why I built this system. This is based on using soaker hoses to wrap around the inside of each container, and attaching the hose to a water timer.

The hardest part of this drip irrigation for container garden system is getting the water. I can’t answer that one for you, as each situation is different. For this rooftop, we were able to bring the water up through a kitchen window in the back of the building. If you are going to bend the hose over a ledge, be sure to provide support where it bends over the wall, it can rub and leak.

The first thing to do when starting this is to uncoil the hose in the hot sun, and let it sit there for a few hours. This will allow the hose to straighten and you can work with it easier. Try to find 3/8″ soaker hose for this project. It bends easier.

To keep the hose inside the containers, you can use coat hanger wire cut into a U shape and pushed over the hose into the soil. Or use cable ties with holes drilled into the plastic pots. Rocks can also hold down the hose, but then you have to get rocks onto your balcony or roof. Not fun.

If you have a container garden on a patio, this is perfect. Water is easy to get to. I push the pots together to create a mass planting, and to hide the hose as it goes from pot to pot. As you can see from these photos, this system also works great for urban areas. How are you planning on using this? Let us know in the comments below.

June 28, 2016
DIY Soaker Hose Irrigation System – GF Video

I put together this DIY soaker hose irrigation system for my raised bed vegetable garden and made a video for you. With this and a timer, I don’t have to spend time watering by hand, and wasting water. Soaker hoses are great for slowly watering your garden while saving water. In another video I show how to run a garden hose underground to your garden beds.

Steps to build your DIY soaker hose irrigation system:

The video explains it quite well, I think, but here are some photos and tips to make it all work.

Soaker hose is available in a few different diameters. Lately I’ve been seeing mostly 3/8″ diameter hose. Buy the hose tubing connectors that match your diameter. Either a farm supply store or a hardware store will probably have the T and elbow connectors.

Soaker hose is easiest to work with when it has been sitting in the sun for a few hours. Lay it out flat, use some rocks to hold the ends and keep it from curling. It cuts easily with a wire cutters or scissors. Be sure to cut off about 6″ of hose with the feed end of the hose before cutting the lateral lengths that run down the bed.

If your hose pressure is enough to pop out the elbows and Ts, use wire or cable ties to connect the hoses. At the hose ends, I use a wooden dowel or bend over the end of the hose. Sometimes bending the hose doesn’t work.

Parts needed for this project:

Easy To Program Water Timer

Good quality soaker hose

Here is a diagram of the watering system for my raised bed vegetable garden:For my beds, I run a hose across the bottom end of the bed for a trellis. I usually plant snow peas or beans on a trellis at both ends, and the lateral soaker hoses don’t do a great job of getting to all the seeds I plant along that edge.

For connecting the garden hose to the bed, I show in this soaker hose installation video how I bury the hose so the lawn mower doesn’t run over it.

I have found it best to use your soaker hose drip irrigation system once or twice a week in the early morning, you want long deep watering, not short shallow watering. Here is a garden hose timer that works well for automated watering.

June 28, 2016
Rainwater Collection With Recycled Materials – GF Video

Build a Rainwater Collection system using recycled materials from your yard and the town dump! This rainwater harvesting setup uses recycled rain gutters and recycled water tanks to collect rainwater for your garden. Super simple to put together, this rig is on our friend Priscilla’s small farm. To do this, they used some found materials, rain gutters, and they had some old water tanks nearby. So they put together this easy rainwater collection system to catch the rainwater off their barn roof.

This rainwater collection system is powered by gravity. The barn and the tanks sit higher than most of the farm, and at the base of the tank is a regular garden hose valve where they connect a hose to water their garden. This is not a system for collecting potable drinking water, OK? This system works great for watering plants.

Rainwater Collection: Use What You Got

In the true spirit of Use What You Got™, Priscilla and her husband put this together by themselves. With a few ladders they attached the rain gutter to the edge of the barn roof, and then wired the second piece of recycled rain gutter to channel the rainwater to the water tank. Simple, and it works great, as you can see in the video.

A few things to keep in mind when building a rain water collection system, don’t use any tanks that may have held hazardous materials. If you don’t know what was in a tank or barrel originally, don’t repurpose it for watering your garden. I have seen gravity fed soaker hose systems for sale on the web, stay tuned for more videos on rainwater harvesting. In our garden we have a soaker hose drip irrigation system setup, and it is powered by a pump. Fedco Seeds Organic Growers Supply has drip irrigation parts for sale. Check out the links below for our soaker hose drip irrigation videos:

Click Here To Watch GF Drip Irrigation Videos

October 9, 2013
Raised Bed Garden Plans For A Self Contained Garden : GF Video

This raised bed garden plan video is perfect for a school garden project, or for building raised beds on a concrete or asphalt playground. This kind of raised bed is also good for raised beds on top of contaminated soil. This self contained raised bed is a plywood box supported by concrete blocks, a plastic liner keeps moisture away from the wooden sides of the raised bed.

I saw this raised bed at a Whole Foods in St Louis, MO. I like the simple design of the raised bed, one can build it with a few tools and a saw. This kind of bed would be great for a school that wants to build a garden in a playground or parking lot. You don’t have to dig up anything, just build these raised beds and drop in the soil. If you have soil contamination in your yard, yet you want a vegetable garden, this design will work for you. ( we have another video coming up about gardening in or on contaminated soil, join our email list to be alerted to that video post )

This design uses treated plywood for longevity, and the treated plywood is kept separate from the garden soil by a plastic liner. The raised bed is supported by concrete footers that are usually used to build decks. Holes are drilled through the liner and plywood for drainage.

This kind of container gardening requires one to pay attention to the moisture level of the garden soil in the raised bed. This soil will dry out faster than the surrounding earth. I think a soaker hose drip irrigation system – drip irrigation video here – would work great for this bed.

What kind of raised beds do you have? ? Questions, Comments? please let us know below:

May 1, 2013
Well Water Pump Repair! GF TV video

The electric pump that pumps water to our drip irrigation system broke down, so its time for some electric motor repair. This pump supplies water to our drip irrigation system for our vegetable garden. We use soaker hose watering system for the garden, you can watch our how to make a DIY drip irrigation system video here

But the pump broke. I think it got flooded with the heavy rains we had. GF Radio co-host Mike suggested replacing the capacitor, so we ordered one and we’ll see what happens in the video here.

What we’ve learned about drip irrigation:

Most vegetables and flowers do not have to be watered everyday. I found myself over-watering the plants when I first turned on the plant watering system. I know have the water timer set to turn on the water every 3 days and it runs for an hour. The plan is to water the soil well and then let it dry out between waterings. You don’t want wet soil all the time. If you notice moss growing in your vegetable beds, you are over watering your plants.

Several beds have plastic mulch over the soil, we put the soaker hoses under the plastic and it all works fine. Check out the links below for more drip irrigation videos and posts

Soaker Hose Drip Irrigation How-to Video

Rooftop Container Garden Watering System Video

Flower Garden Watering system

July 11, 2012
Drip Irrigation System with Soaker Hose – GF Video

I use this homemade DIY drip irrigation system with soaker hose for my raised vegetable beds. Its easy to build and works great. Watch the video to see our first take on a soaker hose system. If you want to build a simpler version see my video for PVC connected soaker hose system.

The drip irrigation system I built uses copper pipe, which can be expensive, you can also use PVC pipe to build the manifolds that feed the soaker hoses.

I dug a slot into the ground and pushed the garden hose into it to hide the hose feeding each raised bed. This makes lawnmower much easier too, no chance of running over a garden hose that way.

Key to watering your garden with drip irrigation is to not water it too much, i know its fun to watch the water ooze out of the soaker hoses, but you want the beds to dry out a bit between waterings. I water my vegetable beds every 4-5 days. Tomatoes, especially, grow best when the soil dries out between waterings. Too much water is just as bad as not enough water, it makes it easy for fungus and disease to grow.

How long do soaker hoses last? I’ve had these in the ground year round for about 10 years. Some hoses have leaked, but not a lot. And its obvious when they are leaking, and easy to fix. All you do is cut out the leak, and connect the two pieces back together with a piece of pipe.

If the water pressure going into the hoses is fairly low, or if you use an inline pressure reducer attached to the garden hose, you can use cable ties instead of clamps to put the lines together.

Water timers for garden hoses have improved a bit lately, below is one i recommend. Some of these timers are awful to try to program.

September 27, 2009