The reason I asked was I was curious if you had found a clever way to get the drip tape to circle around something. I’ve used drip tape (eg t-tape) in my gardens for several years now but never have successfully gotten it to make curves. For the trees, I had been planning on using emitter tubing; same stuff as the header lines but with emitters built in every whatever spacing. This seemed to me to be a better way to go, especially if you have wide spacing between your trees, where a straight run of t-tape would mostly miss the tree zones. The emitter tubing can be bent in large circles and seems like it would be easy to move and add on to as the trees grow.
For inground trees, unless many drippers spread out over a large area of the root system are used, the drip system may have a long term negative effect on the root system and tree. For a full grown peach tree the natural root system can cover a circle with a 15 to 20 foot diameter. Micro sprinklers might be a better choice or perhaps 4 or 5 concentric rings of drippers. For a high density orchard where trees are kept dwarf it would be different. I’m not an expert in drip irrigation but that’s what is logical to me.
Drip tape is a short-term item. It won’t last more than a season or two. For permanent crops like trees, you want to use sprinklers or in-line emitter tubing. Either way, invest in a good filter and a flushing system. Your drip system is an investment and deserves to be treated properly.
I like Netafim’s UniRam tubing but I use some pretty nasty water at times and don’t want to have to replace the tubing.
For the same reason, I like disc filters. They hold an amazing amount of crud and won’t clog even with organics like algae in the water. I like the Rainbird 1" filter because it’s relatively cheap on amazon ($34.58 currently.
I put one of these on the end of every tubing run. It’s an air-vent that also flushes a small amount every time the system starts up. Helps get rid of debris in the tubing which makes the system start up smoother, and stay running without problems longer.
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