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Is Drip Irrigation Right For Me?
   

Do you use sprinklers or a garden hose to water flower beds, vegetable gardens, shrubs or trees? If you do, drip irrigation is for you.

(If you operate a greenhouse, see the How-To article on greenhouses)

Let's compare sprinklers and hand watering to drip irrigation.

Runoff

A sprinkler or garden hose delivers a large volume of water in a hurry. As much as 400 gallons per hour which is so much that the soil does not have time to absorb the water. The result is runoff and erosion. Puddles form in the low spots and not enough water is absorbed in the high spots - for an uneven distribution.

Evaporation

Sprinklers and hand watering deliver water to the surface of the soil. Much of the water is lost to evaporation. Often the rest of the water never penetrates the soil more than an inch or two, not deep enough for the entire root system. Instead, water often runs off to a low lying puddle rather than soaking deep. But why?

 
   

Too much water

The reason sprinkler water is not absorbed deep into the soil has to do with the way that water moves in soil. Water moves by gravity and by capillary action. What is capillary action?

If you repeatedly wet the corner of a towel, eventually the entire towel will become wet. That's capillary action. Water moves slowly from thread to thread, wetting the strands as it goes.

The same thing happens in soil. Water moves down, sideways and even up against the force of gravity by capillary action, but it can only move slowly in all but very sandy soils.

Capillary water is important because it is the only water in the soil available to plant roots.

Sprinkler water doesn't penetrate soil well because it delivers too much water at once for capillary action to work as it should.

 

 

Clay Soils

On clay soils, sprinkler water can also compact the surface by wetting fine clay particles that form a soup that dries hard as pottery and further slows the absorption of water.

Drip irrigation solves the problem by delivering water slowly so that the water has time to flow down and out by capillary action to the entire root area.

Efficiency

Sprinklers soak the entire surface of the garden. In contrast, drip irrigation uses a system of tubing and drippers to supply water drop by drop right to the root area where it does the plant the most good. Only a small soil surface area near the dripper is wet. Most of the soil surface of the garden and all the leaves of the plants stay dry.

Drip irrigation has no runoff, no erosion and little evaporation loss. The result is that drip irrigation has an efficiency of 95% compared to 50% to 65% for overhead sprinklers.

 

Sprinkler water can compact clay soils. Drip irrigation avoids compaction by the slow delivery of water drop by drop


Older shrubs and trees often show dramatic growth when consistent, reliable drip irrigation replaces hit and miss watering by hand or sprinkler

Air in the soil

Roots need air. Most garden plants will drown if the roots are submerged in water for a period of time. Sprinklers and hand watering can produce puddles that can displace air in the soil and saturate the ground. If the puddles do not have a chance to drain quickly, any plants with their roots under water can be stressed or die.

Drip irrigation keeps vital air in the soil around the roots. The slow drop by drop delivery of water never displaces the air in the soil and the plants avoid the stress of being submerged. Plants that avoid the stress of under or over watering are healthier and more resistant to harm by pests or disease.

The Benefits

Drip irrigation delivers water the way that plants prefer, slowly and in the right amount to cause the least stress and maximum growth.

Sprinklers are great for lawns but for every other flower, vegetable, shrub and tree in your yard, drip irrigation is better.

Here is a list of Benefits... Benefits of Drip Irrigation

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