Garden Watering System

My husband is very good at solving problems. He is always innovating to make things work better in our home and garden. This year he had some great ideas for our watering system in the garden.

There is a lot to it and I mostly just want to document that it happened. If you would like more details I will happily write more. Otherwise, I am just going to let the pictures do the talking.

garden in spring — This is what our garden looked like right after the snow melted. You can see the ditches we have for water to go down.

Here in this great state of Utah we don’t get enough rain to keep our plants growing so we have to devise ways to get water to our plants. In the past we have used the ditch irrigation system (pictured above). You basically dig a ditch for the water to run down then you put your plants next to it. It works well, but it requires maintenance to keep the water running to the end of the ditch. It is also not very efficient.

Tyler made the ditch idea easier by instaling a line that brought water to the top of each line. So at least we didn’t have to drag a hose. Which is what my grandpa used to do.

Last year we switched some of our plants to a system with tubes that took the water directly to the plants. It was much more efficient and it required less upkeep once installed. This year Tyler switched the rest of the garden to a similar system. Oh and did I mention that we bought a timer? Yeah, we did. So we won’t even have to go out and turn it on. Brilliant!

First he had to dig a long trench the length of the garden.

PVP pipes for garden irrigation — He then ran three different lines. You can see the black valves sticking up out of the white PVC. That is where he will attach the tubes the will go down each line.

He ran three separate lines so we can have three different watering schedules. Tomatoes like to be watered deeply but less often. While other plants, like peas, like to be watered more frequently but not necessarily as deep. So we will just group similar plants together on a watering line.

It will also make it so we can rotate where we plant things each year. It isn’t really good for the soil to plant the same thing in the same place year after year. So this way we can just move the black tubes but we won’t have to change the PVC pipes. Which means less digging. Yay!

Here is a close-up of the tubing that will go to each plant. We will stake them into the ground and cover the black cloth with grass clippings.

For the plants that grow well in rows, like potatoes pictured above, we used one long tube with valves inserted into to them all along the length. The water will still fill the ditch, we just won’t have to worry about keeping the ditch clear like we used to.

Here is a close up on the valves in the long tubing.

Garden with two methods of drip irrigation. — You can see the two different kinds of watering systems.

Watering a garden with ditch irrigation. — We are still going to water some things the “old fashioned” way for now. Here is a picture so you can get a better idea of how it works. These are pumpkins.

I think the timer is really my favorite part about this. It means that I won’t have to remember to go out and water the garden every few days. It also means that we won’t have to ask someone to come do it for us if we go on vacation. And since we can link it to our phones it will be easier to turn off if we do happen to get rain. (Like the crazy three week long rain storm that we got the end of May. That never happens here!)

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