Drip Irrigation Fail!

I mentioned at the end of my last post that I added drip irrigation to my revised raised bed.Well, it did not work out. I figured it was no big deal to add 10 small drip emitters to this water line, but it turns out that it was just too much. The pressure dropped substantially and my regular lawn sprinklers wouldn't even pop up completely. The water literally dripped out of the emitters instead of pouring out as they were supposed to.

That wasn't going to work. So, I took a look at the water lines I have. Turns out I have three separate sprinkler lines that run to my back yard from the manifold in the front. These three lines are meant to water my lawn and flower bed. Unfortunately, the people that installed the back yard 15 years before I bought it had all of the flower bed and one third of all the lawn sprinklers on one line. The second line had only 3 lawn sprinklers and the third line only two sprinklers. Not well balanced.

My fix was easy. First, I re-routed a couple of "heavy use line" sprinklers to the other two lines.Fast and easy and cheap (I used scrap PVC I had laying around). Then, I ran shrub bubbler sprinklers (allow you to control how much water bubbles out) to both large raised beds from two separate lines. For some reason, the shrub bubbler sprinklers take away less pressure from the lines than the drip emitters. Go figure!

Anyway, everyone is now getting the water they need. Ultimately, I will have all of the garden on one line and the lawn on the other two. However, that is a bit down the road. I don't feel like doing all that digging this year.

Raised Bed Revision.

 I built a 4ft by 10ft  raised bed a couple of years ago against my back fence. A great resource, but there was a problem. The bed was too big for me to reach across comfortably, so plants that were along the back near the fence were somewhat neglected (trimming, pest control, etc.) I few weeks ago, I decided to fix it.  Below is the original bed.

   

It was an easy fix. I just cut out a 2ft section of the bed and added a three sided 2ft by 2ft by 2f cut out. I added a little pond stone to the bottom so it doesn't get too muddy. Now I can comfortably reach all areas of the bed. Below is the after shot.

 

I also added drip irrigation while I was at it.Cost? About 20 bucks because I was all out of lumber and emitters.