From: machanicm@gtephx.UUCP (Mindy Machanic)
Newsgroups: rec.gardens
Subject: Re: watering with drips
Summary: you must plant annuals
Keywords: drip irrigation
Date: 8 Apr 92 17:21:20 GMT
Organization: AG Communication Systems, Phoenix, Arizona

In article <1992Apr7.204506.6144@ntg.com>, dplatt@ntg.com (Dave Platt) writes:
> In article <1992Apr6.191043.3214@gtephx.UUCP> machanicm@gtephx.UUCP (Mindy Machanic) writes:
> 
> My own garden is a single bed, about 5' deep (at most) and 25' long.
> I do a full double-dig every other year, and single-dig the soil in the
> alternate years (and add lots of compost every year).  As a result, the
> soil is loose and fertile (a far cry from how it started out... brick-
> hard Mountain View adobe), and I use an intensive planting style.  There
> are plants _everywhere_ in the bed... the whole bed is full of roots by
> the end of the growing season.

If you dig it up every year, you're only planting annuals. We have planted 
bulbs and perennials, so we don't dig every year. We just dig big holes and
work them well with organic material, and occasionally put gypsum at the
bottom (talk about brick-hard soil - we're in caliche here in Phoenix! It
can take an hour to dig a 5-gallon-sized hole in untouched/unsoaked dirt.).
Then we leave them alone. We have plants, everywhere, too, but we don't
have the luxury of moving the hose around every year, because some of our
plants never go dormat so we try not to dig them and move them unnecessarily.
> 
> It turns out that a single 50' length of "leaky" hose covers the bed
> nicely, if I bury it in a loop-shaped trench about 4" deep.  Nothing in
> the bed is more than about 1' away from the hose.
 
So you are laying hose at a 2:1 ratio for length of hose to length of bed.
We just ran the straight hose line at the back of the garden, and ran
spaghettis with drippers to the plants. If you have to snake the hose, or 
loop it, then you have hose running in the middle of the garden and you 
have to be careful where you dig when you plant new stuff so you don't chop 
into the hose with the shovel. (We nick the feeder lines, but they're easy to repair with a coupler
piece - cut out the nicked part and rejoin.)

> hand (or by hose) for a few weeks after I transplant them...  watering
> deeply but not too often.  This encourages them to get their roots down
> into the deeper soil, where the moisture from the leaky hose is
> available.  By the time June arrives, I've stopped surface-watering
> entirely (except after I side-dress the plants with fish emulsion or
> another fertilizer).                                          

Good practice for new plants no matter what kind of irrigation you use...

>The plants get a steady supply of moisture at root
> level (1 or 2 automatic watering cycles per day), and the soil surface

How long are your watering cycles if you give them 1 or 2 automatic watering
cycles per day?!?!? Phoenix summers are hotter than Mountain View summers,
and we only do one watering cycle every other day when the temperature
is betweem 90 and 100 or 105, and once a day when it's over 100 or 105 out, 
for about an hour each time. Our plants thrive. Since your water is on so 
much, I would think you are not making the plants develop deep roots, but 
rather giving them shallow (4" from the surface) water to encourage a lot of 
shallow roots. Not to mention using a lot of water! The idea is to make the
roots go deeper than 4" if possible in the summer so that they will stand
the heat and drought conditions better, and you can cut down on the amount
of watering you have to do. That's one of the benefits of drip from drippers
instead of soakers. The water goes down instead of out so much. We've dug
up little plants with nice long roots. So we can cut back on the water to 
once every two or three days in late summer and fall when the temperatures 
are still over 90, because the plants can go down farther for water.  

Course, it could just be the plants are sending those long deep roots out
to get cool!

Mindy 


-- 
*****************************************************************************************
Mindy Machanic  (AG Communication Systems/Quality Engineering, Phoenix, AZ)               
UUCP: ....!{ncar!noao!asuvax | att}!gtephx!machanicm    FAX: (602) 581-4022
Internet: gtephx!machanicm@asuvax.eas.asu.edu           Voice: (602) 582-7374