I've been using a lot of this company's stuff.
Mister Landscaper Drip Irrigation and Micro Spray
Its fairly inexpensive and lots of different heads and patterns to choose from. I pick it up at Lowe's. I add about $20-$30 worth of stuff to my system each year and expand it out.
Right now, I have 3 zones:
1. Flower beds in front of house (keeps the birdbath full, too).
2. Flower beds, flower boxes, planters and hanging baskets in back of house and around pool/deck area.
3. Garden way out in the back yard.
- For the garden, I used my tractor and a plowshare mounted to one of my quick attach plates and sub-soiled about 200' of black poly pipe from the house to the garden in about 10 minutes. I used several variations of impact sprinklers or oscillating sprinklers for a few years, but found that we have some un-curable tomato disease in our soil, where the water splashes on the dirt, the dirt splashes on the leaves, then the plant rots from the bottom up. Several folks recommended switching to drip at the plant base, so that's what I'm doing out there now. We'll see how it goes.
To run the whole thing, I've been using a timer and manifold just like this for about 4-5 years now.
Orbit Irrigation |
It runs 6-7 months on just two (2) AA batteries! Fantastic!
They change and modify the designs of these things every few years, it seems, so when I bought it, I purchased a couple extra valves so I wouldn't have to fight compatibility in the future. I have room to add one more zone if I ever need it, but for now, I just keep a hose hooked to the unused port on the manifold. The two outer manifolds have their own shutoffs, so I use the end one. That way I can use it for car washing, power washer, etc...
