I was all set to start installing a drip irrigation system for my 14 backyard fruit trees next weekend. Now, I’m wondering if I should do sprinklers instead. Drip irrigation probably isn’t strictly necessary, but I’m in a dry climate and my work has me away from home for 1-2 weeks at a time fairly regularly in the growing season.
Sprinklers are less ideal for the trees and I think watering grass is dumb, but, at this point, I’ve accepted that the less I water the grass the more the weeds outcompete it. And it’s going to be a while before I can delete most of the grass. The fruit trees are placed sort of along the perimeter of the yard.
It’d certainly be possible to do both drip for the trees and sprinklers for grass, but that’s even more work. I also have some landscaping trees, shrubs, and plants that will benefit from a little water, so I’m starting to wonder if a sprinkler system is best for getting everything all at once.
One advantage of just drip is that I can probably do it all in one zone, whereas sprinklers would need more zones to keep the pressure up.
Lot is 1/2 acre total with house, two garages and big driveway, so the yard and fruit trees are in roughly a U-shape along the north, east, and south fences.
If you’re using a well that has sediment in it (I am) it has made all my drip line irrigation plugged up. So I’ve been converting each plant to a bubbler, or a larger 1gph dripper that seems to not stop up. The .5 and lower stops up for me also. Just my experience with dripline, however if you have sediment free water it could work well for you.
They sell removeable inline filters that you can add to the main and/or front of the each runs depending on how clean you want your lines to be. Probably a good idea to splice in some even with larger diameter drip heads.
A half acre lot would likely be a good amount of zones. My recommendation would be to plumb up a dedicated drip irrigation valve (rain bird makes a good one with integrated filter and pressure reduction) and run your single loop of 1/2” black poly by each of your trees. I’d then put two 2gph drip emitters on each side of the tree a bit out from the trunk depending on the trees size. I prefer to use multiple emitters so if one fails at least the tree still gets some water and give me time to notice. Depending on your soil type (and pet/kid situation ) you may want to use micro sprays
However when you plumb up your sprinkler manifold with your drip valve on it leave room for future valves and possible expansion. I would further recommend using unions on your valves to simplify future valve replacement and as you are in a cold zone integrating a ball valve into the manifold and various zones that simplifies draining the system for winter.
Now you have your sprinkler wire pulled and valve manifold built with room for expansion if you choose to do so.
@Gkight that’s a good point, I’m on a well and I actually need to put a sediment filter in for the house water too, my faucet screens do slowly get plugged up
Yeah I need to routinely clear the sediment filter when I notice the dripping to be slow, which for me is about every other day. It’s a lot of sand here.