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.
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