Is the fedco drip Garden Irrigation Starter Kit a good start home garden?

General Gardening
#1

I’ve never used an irrigation setup before, just watered by hose, but thinking I need to be more efficient & fancier. In fact I’ve only been ‘garden manic’ for 2 years now since buying a house (first and last, so no holding back on the garden!)

I don’t have any experience of knowledge of irrigation for gardens (but professional botanist & so far so good with lots of study on the garden), so looking for advice. I’m at least 100 miles from any retail place that would sell this sort of thing so can’t go look or ask. I’m interested in practicality, quality, & usability. I’m on a village (municipal) water system. I have two outside faucets so may set up two systems to avoid having too many hoses & so forth.

I’ve bought seeds etc. from fedco before, find them a decent organization, and thinking of buying the fedco ‘Garden Irrigation Starter Kit’: [the web-machine says that I cant use links, but can search it - in brief it’s the various parts & lines for allegedly 200’ of irrigation] & the 'expansion kit to extend the lines. It looks more or less intuitive and would likely be able to figure out what to do (incl. what else needed) with that, but on the other hand should I consider something else lest I get started off in the wrong direction?

I’m growing the usual (& weirder) vegetables and adding a ton (metric) of fruit this year (primarily strawberries, blueberries, currants, Rubus, some trees); on sandy loam in 5a. My main vegetable garden is ~15 or 20x75 feet with some smaller outliers & fruit trees here & there. I suppose

I can hand water outliers like individual trees (I’m planning to pretty much fill my 1000m2 lot (inc. house & garage) with garden incl. flowery stuff between edibles, so getting the main garden & fruit patches irrigated would be enough).

Anybody have any advice, reading suggestions or other that’d be useful for me?

#2
#3

Me again - I read that referenced thread (& others searched) but now in some ways even more confused; it seems that there must be different ‘levels’ of home garden irrigation with a lot of super cheap stuff on amazon & big-box stores to thousands of $ engineered systems (obviously), with my proposed fedco system somewhere on the low end (but probably better than dirt cheap amazon). want something basic yet of decent quality, automation, computer-controls, LED screens, etc. not needed.
One poster seemed to allude to drawbacks of the drip tape with perforated holes, indicating maybe there’s some system where one attaches various nozzles with desired flow at desired locations, but I’m not sure where to see pictures of such systems.
Maybe what would be ideal is some online company that sells the various levels of systems so I could see what changes in technology, materials, etc. with cost.
Sorry to be so dumbfounded by all this, but I have been unable to find anything that makes sense beyond the fedco info.
If spending $500 instead of $250 would get me a system that would last longer, work better, or reduce waste (or cheap labor exploitation) that that would be preferable to me, I just don’t quite know how to determine what else there is.
I followed a few links mentioned in the thread referenced but get either 404s, or big box sellers with no ‘context’ of the integrated system, or apparently firms dealing for commercial operations,
Again, I just want to have something that I can use by turning the faucets on & off (no timer needed for now), & if there are some deficits I can always hand water until can get things optimized.
So, anybody know how I can see, say, a description & pictures with largish home garden-scale ‘worst, good, better, best’ systems & benefits/drawbacks?

#4

Honestly, my opinion if you are trying to figure it out would be to just get a cheap setup from Amazon or Home Depot (or your preferred big box) for like $40 and decide how you want to expand or improve in later seasons.

#5

Putting a timer on a sprinkler would be easier. You just set how long and when and it does the rest everyday. My advice would be the same as Ryans. Buy the cheapest one to verify that is what you want. I’ve seen them for less than $20 on Amazon.

#6

Thanks for the replies - I’m determined to get this right, or somewhat right from the start; the start being zero knowledge.

My goal is a decent system that efficiently and effectively irrigates [so surface not spray] by gaining some knowledge and/or advice, rather than buying more plastic crap at the cheapest price from the biggest chain store and then throwing it out to further stuff the ‘landfills’ when it fails or isn’t what I want. Ditto for my tools or anything else. Everything made uses non-renewable resources and depends on the work of human beings to do so (fairly paid or otherwise - usually otherwise if cheap), then takes space in the land or wherever else it is disposed of (or flakes apart and adds more microplastics to the soil).

Call me old-fashioned, but I try to treat my garden and the rest of the earth with the same care meaning minimize waste and buy the right tool for the job with the quality to serve as long as possible. Of course irrigation stuff, at least at my scale, seems mostly plastic so won’t last forever but some will last longer (and serve better) than others. Sorry for that small digression & whinging, but that’s my reasoning for trying to understand this question reasonably well before I buy anything.

Anyway, so I kept looking for more info, so sought as much university extension and the like material because goggle results are annoyingly almost all ads for this sort of search, and the results pages stuffed with pictures of lawn sprinklers for sale to make it even less clear.

So adding ‘site:edu’ or ‘site:gov’ to the searches cut down on that & helped me finally get some of useful stuff. Since I live in northern MI I didn’t look at so many results for hot, dry states (though the UGA one was pretty useful) but more at Midwest, NE & Canadian.

From that I learned a few things about basic system parts & sizes, about materials (like avoid PVC or vinyl lines in favor of polyethylene [or maybe polyurethane if that’s available-like my great ‘water right’ garden hoses]), and that flat drip tape hoses don’t last long, and the like. I also got a better idea of what so search for to answer specifics and to find a few places on the web selling what I might want.

Then I came across a link to ‘irrigation information tutorial’ website that is mostly broken now, so good old archive org helped me see it and it is just the sort of excellent, organized, illustrated, detailed information I was hoping to find from the start! Let’s see if I am allowed a link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140630120652/http://www.irrigationtutorials.com/dripguide.htm

So I’ve made some progress I think, and decided against the Fedco kit because it’s got the flat shorter-lasting drip tape and vinyl lines, have found a couple of places selling what looks like a better option for me (e.g., K-D500 at dripirrigation.com - advice on this or businesses appreciated if anyone reads this far!).

So sort of ‘thanks for nothing’, I joke - with no ill will and with appreciation for advice given - because in not being given the answer I needed I had to scout it out myself and learned much more from the work. I still have a bit more to learn before I can order the correct stuff, but it seems a lot more like something I know a little of now than an indecipherable mystery like it did last weekend, and it only took me … 6 or 8 hours of my life! (said in a horrified voice, but really not so long to learn something new just doesn’t feel so healthy on a computer)

With that said, any advice still appreciated.

#7

Most of the cheapest kits are for individual drip irrigation distributor heads. Using them for smaller plants would be about as effective and efficient as I can think of for a budget setup. A huge pack of them plus hose for them is probably close to $30. Also consider a pressure regulator and backflow preventer as discussed in my thread I linked.

#8

The system keeps popping up stating ‘You were logged out.’ after about 10 seconds even after browser restart. I noticed early on this site won’t work on my main browser so hopefully this isn’t some ‘i-phone optimization’ tweak making it unusable on anything but…

& hopefully this is temporary or will have to pitch this into the growing pile of garden forums where I can’t get answers for whatever reason (mostly apparently because of few users anymore or ‘wal-mart garden center’-level of knowledge).

Alas, maybe it’s the gods telling me if I look it all up myself bit by bit I’ll learn better, sheesh. I speak some Ukrainian so might have to post more on the excellent forum.vinograd.info (which is very active even in the middle of an invasion & has more than just viticulture; check it out with an autotranslation ÿêùî íå ÷èòàºø óêðà¿íñüêîþ).

Anyway, typing this on text editor so I can maybe paste a reply.

Thinking I’ll buy a ‘kit’ from one of the reputable mail-order irrigation places (of which there are way more than I’d think!, not being a suburban lawn person), as mentioned here & elsewhere.

E.g.,

https://www.dripirrigation.com/the-perfect-drip-irrigation-kit-model-k-d500-for-up-to-200-plants
https://www.plumbingsupply.com/drip.html#inlineemitters (this one doesn’t have kits but does state clearly which parts are US made)

By looking these over I’ve been able to determine what parts available, necessary, which fit together, etc. Some of the sellers specify the manufacturer of the parts, and looking those mfrs. up I’m happy to see that many or most of them are made in the US rather than china or some other cheap labor totalitarian regime 8000 miles away. Most have fairly detailed product info sheets available for all parts, a big help to sort of see what they look like at the very least. I with there were a way to find out which if any brands are sturdier/better than others but they all seem to be made mainly for professional agro so that’s a good sign.

Definitely will use a backflow valve & pressure regulator (all kits have these so their necessity was taught to me from the start!).

Might buy a basic mechanical timer if I can find one (doubtless all chinese) too, but not an I-phone person (addict) I don’t want or need to operate it by komputer from inside my house or the saloon!

The hardest part - since my garden’s covered in snow so can’t measure; and adding loads of new plants & reconfiguring & doubtless enlarging; and this’ll be just year 3 - is calculating/figuring/conjuring up how many emitters, lengths of hoses, etc.

Since I have a couple few smaller garden/fruit areas besides the main vegetable patch that are accessible to 2 outlets on opposite sides of the house, I think if I buy one of the big kits I’ll have enough to get the main garden set then buy extras later to rig up to the other spots.

So I guess this year I’ll learn some of the on-ground practicalities: do I keep tripping over it? Does it blow around in the wind? Does it leak? Pain in the arse to put away in winter? Bird toy?