The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Developing a permanent irrigation system

We attach our sprinklers to fence posts so they'll spray over tall plants.During the 2008 droughty summer, we were low on both time and money since I was working for pennies at a local nonprofit.  After shelling out so much cash to find a type of sprinkler that worked for us, we could only afford to get a couple of them.  So I laboriously moved hoses and sprinklers multiple times a week to reach every zone in the garden, often crushing plants at the edges of beds in the process.

This year, we're working on a more permanent setup.  The upfront cost has been about $80, since we splurged on several more sprinklers, but we've nearly gotten to the point where we can water the entire garden just by flicking a switch and then a series of valves.  Our permanent system consists of pulsating sprinklers on three foot tall fenceposts at the edges of the garden --- the height allows water to spray over tall beds of tomatoes to reach shorter plants in the background.  We turn on two sprinklers at a time, since adding any more sprinklers to the system drains the water pressure.

Head to head coverage of sprinklersWe're still tweaking the system to achieve the head to head coverage recommended by sprinkler experts.  We'll keep you posted about anything we figure out as we optimize this stage.


This post is part of our Irrigation lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries:





Anna Hess's books
Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.






profile counter myspace



Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.

Required disclosures:

As an Amazon Associate, I earn a few pennies every time you buy something using one of my affiliate links. Don't worry, though --- I only recommend products I thoroughly stand behind!

Also, this site has Google ads on it. Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to a website. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to users based on their visit to various sites. You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting this site.