Ditching Drip Tape for Drip Tubing? | Which Is Better?
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- čas přidán 16. 10. 2022
- We've been trying to determine the best way to create a drip irrigation for our round raised garden beds. We want to plant these raised beds very densely, so we need something that is going to provide really good water coverage over the entire bed.
We think we've found a good solution that should work for a variety of vegetables and flowers that we intend on planting in these round raised beds. We'll be slightly modifying our current system and using drip tubing instead of drip tape.
This will be our first time using drip tubing, and there definitely seems to be a couple challenges with using it compared to drip tape. However, the drip tubing fittings and installation appear to be cheaper and easier to install. If we like using the drip tubing after this one season, we may make the switch in some of our other raised beds as well.
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Spiral the drip tubing. A couple landscape staples and done. One connection, one goofplug.
One of my greatest investments was to buy a little tool that inserts the barb onto the 1/4” tubing. The best 20 bucks I ever spent. Makes the job so much easier!
I'm thinking it would be less complex if you just run 1 long piece of drip tubing and run it is a spiral pattern around the round bed.
Yea I've seen others do it that way in round beds.
I came here to say this. Less work and less fittings.
That's what I do and attach each end to the main line.
I have seen a lot of people do that in containers and such.
That’s what I do…not as many pricey connections (not that it breaks the bank).
I’m and both on the same system! Drip tape on one side and emitters on the other side with mineral buckets and bags.
I just rewatched this. Great info. Thanks travis.
Glad you enjoyed it!
That was a great idea !! Going to give it a try
Good looking raised beds and so inspiring!! Appreciate you!!
Thanks Sandra!
One of the most clear drip irrigation videos. Keep it coming! I feel confident set it up on my round large smart pot bed.
Thanks Krystal!
Looks great! Good job.
Thanks Dottie!
Nice video Travis! It’s good to be watching you again & HELLO from Louisiana!
Welcome back!
love your raised beds - i have 5 and love them - the soil does settle however I think this is good because it allows me to top them off with new soil between crops. have a blessed week.
Thanks Juana! Blessings to you as well!
Finally found the perfect video I was looking for. Thank you 👍🙂
Glad it helped!
We use tubing in our 3,000 sq foot garden and it works out well. Easy to pull up and store when needed and available locally as well.
Travis, I have used the tubing in conjunction with the tape in my in ground garden. I usually just wind it around all the plants that I want to water and only use one piece. Now that piece can be 10 to 15 feet long at times and other places it may only be 5 foot. I have also used it to start trees and shrubs by running a piece all the way around a tree a foot or so out from the trunk. Works great when I need a little more saturation at times.
For your round raised beds, (just a suggestion to try) get the 1/2 tubing and let it curl in a circle attach a T from your inlet and connect both sides and the use your new 6 inch drip tubings to go across from one side and connect to the other side. Instead of going down the middle and dividing the 2 sides. I hope I explained it correctly.
That way, the new drip lines will extend the whole beds.
I run circles main line just like you, but not the entire length of the bed, only 1/3 of the way across. Then I run 1 small circle of drip tubing in a small circle in the center of the bed. From there I put 1 drip tubing circle near the outer edge, and a center spaced between the two.
This allows for maximum planting area. The cool part is you can beak up the beds by putting taller plants in the center then work out using shorter plants. Consecutive rings getting fewer and taller as they approach the center.
I used tubbing this year and man was it a life saver! We went on a 2 week motorcycle trip over the summer, during the hottest 2 weeks in Fl and everything was kept nice and moist. They struggled a bit but all the plants were alive and still producing
When I was in Florida it rained every afternoon at about 3pm.
On my round bed I used blue household water pipe wrapped around the inside with a tee pice to main feed then punched holes where needed and ran drip line from that. Almost Any plastic pipe can be bent to any shape if you fill it with sand. Then Capp off pipe both ends heat where you want and bend. It works with the white electrical conduit pipe too 👍🏼🇬🇬
Drip irrigation is my next project. This weekend if possible. Thanks for the info.
You got this!
When you punch the holes, they need to be in the middle or slightly lower on the supply header. This will help the tubing stay level with the bed. I ran into the same problem when I did my landscaping.
We wrestled with how to add drip irrigation to our raised beds last year - I am going to revamp our system with some of your design. I believe after our experience last year your design will be a successful water situation for us. The use of the tubing is brilliant - drip tape that small blows up (trust me)
Osowaw Junction, South Central FL Zine 9b
Don't buy Staples, just use some bare copper wire and bend it if you have some extra laying around the house , coat hangers work as well. Great video, thanks for all your great work on excellent videos!
I used left over 12ga electrical wires, didn't work well. I bought a roll of galvanized steel wire and cut my own. It was a hassle to make them straight and I guess it wasn't thick enough. The mainline and drip lines would move around and come out. I bought some plastic stakes for drip line, they stay in place better. If I were to do it over again, I would but the thickest stuff. It's a pain when stuff moves around. It also depends on how soft your soil is. The softer the soil, the more it moves.
As a former engineer, I would bisect the round bed as you already did with the half inch water supply, but I would run the quarter inch tubing in concentric semicircles connecting each end of the semicircle back to the source half inch water supply. In that way you could use the memory of the quarter inch curved tubing to lay perfectly flat since it comes normally curved anyway.
That’d be the way to go
I made my 1/4" tubing with 6" spacing into concentric circles using t-connecters. I think that works better.
Brand loyalty is important with drip irrigation. There is a small variance between brands that isn't detected until you turn the water on.
I'm on my 3rd year of 1/4" drip tubing in my raised beds. One thing that is different is the dripper application rates. Mine run 1/2 gph per emitter in the tubing, so you don't run the tubing as long as you would the tape. In the raised beds I went with the 6" emitter spacing in the drip depot tubing. I like to use the little 1/4" on/off valves for my tubing runs. The mainline is the same, everything else is smaller though. Also they recommend keeping the length of each1/4" dripline run under 15 feet. So on my 20' beds, I feed left and right from the center off my mainline (two 10' runs per row). Two more tips for us older folks with arthritis in our hands; 1) they make a 1/4" fitting inserting tool that has holes for the fitting to go in and give you more area to push on; 2) a glass of hot water or a 18v heat gun works wonders for softening the ends to push in connectors for both 1/2" and 1/4" tubing. Oh and don't forget, Drip Depot is having their annual 20% off sale sitewide the entire month of October, 2022 and they are a Lazy Dog Farm affiliated company!!!!
I agree with this assessment. When watering for 1 hr the round droppers will emit far more water than the tape. The fix would be to put tape irrigation on one section and round drip on another.
I use 1/2inch drip tube corkscrew into bed using the memory add a couple staples to hold in place
I'm surprised that you don't like pickled one of my absolute favorites in the garden. As far as your beds settling if I was you I'd just what until next year, that gives a lot of room to amend the soil with compost or however you do it. Right now your soil has already been amended.
Thanks for all your hard work posting these videos
Thanks for joining us Rick!
Good show. I've been running drip tubing for several years now since it better suits how we skin our cat. I believe me and ol' Karl would have come off the standpipe with a single fitting and run the tubing in a spiral. Keep in mind that your drip tape in the other beds has 12" oc emitters that put out .25 gph whereas that brown tubing has emitters at 6"oc and that put out .5 gph. In short, the round beds will be getting four times as much water per hour of run time. Might be time to consider splicing in some timers and break the watering into zones based on the bed style's specific layout. Those $12.75 Melnor mechanical timers from Drip Depot are a good value. Killer frost tonight for us at the little ranchito.
Good point on the output from the tubing being more than the tape. The easy solution might just be to plant double rows on the tubing.
I purchased the long cobra hoe a couple weeks back. I should have made the purchase several years ago. A very handy tool for tight areas.
Round bed watering you could try the spiral method to water and plant the round beds with the round tubing.😊
Spiral is definitely way easier. Less fittings👍🏻
Cheap staple replacement is to use jumbo paperclips. Bend open the clip and leave the last bend to hold tubing down
Travis, another easier way, that you may of not thought of is to just use a long piece of the the drip tubing, by connecting it off of a short piece of mainline tubing just coming past the turn off valve and then connecting the long run of the drip tubing laying it going around in a spiral pattern which it naturally bends too anyways, and securing it with U-pin clips to the soil!
That's exactly what I was thinking too.
I really just need to do irrigation of some kind... This whole watering by hand thing is rubbish & really getting old...lol
This is definitely one of the best & clear videos on drip irrigation I've seen.
Also on the raised beds settling. One thing you can do to help minimize the amount of settling is watering them as you fill them in. Water after every 6 inches of dirt or so. It really helps settle the bed more.
You'll definitely be glad you did when you decide to go with an irrigation system.
Oct. is the dryest month here in my zone followed by May. It's good to see some one appreciates parsley, it is really under rated and makes such a big but subtle difference in a recipe. "Kinda nifty" lol. Raised beds looking good..go bro...gg :)
Been dry here too!
I grew 24 celery plants this season and it was *WAY* too much. 4 plants would have been plenty. I also grew Green magic and Imperial broccoli this year. Imperial has been great during the cool months. I thought you would run the drip tubing in 2 circles on the round beds. An outer circle and an inner circle. Then just plant in a circle where the tubing is. (Both ends of the tubing would connect to the main line to help hold it in place)
This should work good for square food gardens
Drip Depot!😊
have you thought about trying the spacing for square foot gardening? those raised beds look nice. cold crop plot lookin good too 🍻
I have. That's pretty much what we do with using our drip tape emitters to space our plant. The only difference is that our rows are not always 1' apart because we like to give a little more room for some things.
I’ve seen where they just run the tubing in a spiral pattern around the bed.
Yep, I agree with Dean S…. Just use drip tape, turn it on its side and go in a spiral. That’s 😊the way I plan on doing next year in my old round cow tanks I’m using. Travis, you’re making a simple job just too complicated.
i tell ya i have tryed everything the pressure in the line being the number one issue we have a small garden set up 3 8 foot long beds one is 4 foot wide for mellons and butternut squash and stuff and the other 2 use two be 3 but a tree fell on one are 3 feet i find it better two use timers for the end of a hose that way you can run 1 100 for hose and connect it two another one two get way out there put a 4 way adaptor on the hose then use 4 different times two water with that way the pressure issue is solved..
CaliKim29 Garden & Home DIY uses a lot of round beds and grow bags. She just lays the tubing in a spiral and holds it down with garden staples --- don't really require much in terms of setup and connectors.
As the tubing wants to curl or arch I’d probably connect 2 or 3 on each side of the main line connected on each end in a semi circle fashion. Keep up the good work!
Got frost coming wed morning here central Arkansas 30 days Early for here
Supposed to get down to 34 here tomorrow night. Got me a little worried ...
Lost butternut sweet potatoes and okra last nite in outside beds got hightunnels closed up tight tonite going below 30 record early frost one month early
It is going to go way down in temps tomorrow in Augusta Ga with a low of 34 and a high of 61
Same here.
We spiral our dripline in circular beds... agg staples zsecure it. we can then cater to different crops
I bought several hundred feet of that 1/4 inch drip tubing. I personally won't buy it again. I bought it to water an existing garden that wasn't pre set up with drip tape. Some emitters don't let any water out and some shoot a jet spray 3 foot out. I put it on corn and have a 8 ft area that doesn't let any water out so I hand water that part of that row. Pain in the rump. I could see it working fine in your raised bed application but I would definitely choose drip tape over drip tubing on row gardens.
Yeah I don't think it would work well in our in-ground garden plots. I like the reliability of the tape for the longer rows.
You could just run the drip tube from the valve in a spiral around the round bed.
Telling you grab those poly cutters and make life simpler. I think two adjustable sprinklers in each bed would be alot easier the bubbler kind
My thoughts on round bed irrigation. Couldn’t you have just coiled the drop tubing around in a spiral to the middle. Used some landscape staples or some sticks to keep the spacing you want. I mean it’s already in a coil. Or, what about a soaker hose, also in a coil around the bed. You can get fittings to splice soaker hoses. Also, FYI, pickled beets are the bomb.😋
If you run the brown tubing straight in the sun it tends to straighten out.
Cold-Air Drainage, the raised beds will have better cold-air-drainage than the field. But how to max the advantage... I may add wind-breaks.
Travis you can make a compost tea from the chicken droppings and the brassicas love it. Make sure you dilute it though or you'll burn the plants. I'm giving it to everything I have planted and it's all growing like crazy. My onions are growing so fast they are already falling over, so I did what you said never do, I cut the tops. The plants just aren't strong enough yet to hold up those long leaves. I counted 5 leaves on a onion today that has only been transplanded a couple weeks and it was tiny when I put it in.
Where can we buy some Evangeline sweet potato slips next year? Every website I looked at are sold out. I want to try them because I've read some good things about them.
Haven't ever tried the Evangeline variety. Not sure where to get them.
@@LazyDogFarm you the man to find them and I think after you read about how many taters they make and how they taste, you'll be on the hunt for them. Danny from DeepSouth grew some in the severe drought this year and made a lot and never watered them.
I think I would take that tubing and put them in a pan of hot water. I should think that should help soften them and kill the memory and then they should return to normal when they cool off.
Big $$$$.
You can have field peas and snaps
Looks good , and can you use the valves to adjust the the flow on each bed?
I'm not sure how to what degree it would adjust the flow, but I can throttle those valves.
@@LazyDogFarmI use these form drip depot Antelco Potstream Adjustable Dripper connected to a Salco Multi-Outlet Barbed Drip Manifold with 10ft of tubing each line with an adjustable valve then to the hose. I move it around the yard watering six plants at a time somtimes more, the spray pattern can be adjusted pretty wide by pressure. it's better than by hand but still time consuming.
At first in my raised beds i was worried that emitters at the end of a long line of drip tubing would be lacking(10 ft runs). 3 seasons later I've not seen a difference at the end of the line.
The solution shown here is perfect engineering wise but takes up a lot of geography, time and parts. If i were to tackle this issue I'd keep the main line down the middle and do concentric loops with the drip line connecting at the far end of the main line as a loop. Still overkill.
If i were a Lazy Dog, I'd put a coil towards the center originating at the emitter valve ending in the center.....If pressure permits..
I was thinking about whether you considered running the water somewhat the same way in the rectangular beds so you didn't lose that 6" or so at the valve end. In other words, from your line in, elbow - valve - straight run to other end of bed - T and come back with tape or tube so you get the use of the whole bed.
I have considered that and might try that on one of the larger ones.
just use one length of drip tape and go in circles with it from outside to middle leaving so many inches between . then plant in the middle between each cicular row of tape
I missed several episodes. What motivates you to try the raised bed gardens?
We wanted to have some areas for smaller plantings -- for veggies, herbs, etc. that don't need an entire 30' row in our in-ground gardens.
Hey Trav. I was thinking, would it be possible to run the main line straight to the center of the bed and cap it. Then run a full circle of drip tubing on the outer edge, one in a central position and a smaller one near the center? You could start and finish the tubing on either side of the main line, this way the natural curve in the drip tubing would work for you, not against its own memory. Never used drip irrigation myself but might be an idea. 👍
I considered that option. Without staples, this was easier. Had I had staples in the beginning, the rings would have been easy as well.
I'm just gonna hang out over here in the weeds and watch this whole thing.......:)
Good idea Tom. lol
Good morning to you @Lazy dog.
Unfortunately, even in the round raised bed, you did not place the drip tubes correctly. When you make holes on one side, you can immediately make holes on the other side in exactly the same place. Thus there are 5 tubes on each side. If you have already made only 4 holes for the tube on the other side, you can measure a longer tube and fill in the gap with irrigation.
When running drip for tomato plants would a micro system be better than an emitter style system so you can place the dripper exactly where you want at the plant instead of having them every 12”?
Depends on your plant spacing. I usually put tomatoes on a 2' plant spacing and don't worry about the emitter between them. Our tomato root systems are usually large enough to benefit from that extra emitter anyways.
I use weed barrier cloth in my garden. I lay my drip tape on top. Do u think that small tubing u r using would work better for me? I was just thinking that since I’m not burying it maybe that will work better???
If it's an in-ground garden with straight rows, I think drip tape would work better. But the tubing is an easier install.
In my opinion I would have Titus compact those raised beds. A couple of snow shoes and be done with it. Watering, I garden to be in the garden. I hand water all of it. Go ahead and yell at me.
Just curious as to why you didn’t just start from center and spiral 🌀the tubing from the inside to the out with one continuous piece and use landscape staples to hold it down? It would require a lot less mainline and less cutting of the tubing as well.
I'm just so used to planting in straight rows. lol
@@LazyDogFarm I hear ya! Lol … can’t wait to see it all in its full glory! 🥬🥦🥕
On hindsight it would have been better to set the in line Vance running along the edge of the beds so you can use more space rather than it poking out and nothing getting planted behind it.
Garden stakes to hold down drip
Why not just go with a spiral for the round beds? Seems easier to me, but then I don't know everything.
Have you thought about lawn staples instead of bricks. That's what I use and it survives hurricanes.
I've since bought staples and they do work very well.
Will this tubing work with your reduced water pressure?
It can only be used with low pressure.
Prob be better to just take the same tubing a lay it out in a swirl
Try hitting the tubing with a hair dryer to remove the memory
Since the tubing is flexible, why not do 6 half moons? Connect at one end of the supply line, sweep around to connect to the other end of the supply line, no goof plug required.
that does sound like a nifty idea.
That was similar to my original plan. Then I got to thinking about planting on a curve and I just couldn't make myself do it. lol
drill holes in hula hoops?
Good idea!
Have you or any of the fam ever grown baby broccoli otherwise known as broccolini if so how did it do ?
Have not grown it.
As with anything in life there's more than 1 way to skin a cat... however I do think you over complicated the drip in the round bed. I use that same drip line and you can do one continuous line up to 30 feet long with out it affecting the water pressure, so you'd use 1 in-line barb off a short length of main line tube & one end goof plug, and yeah get a supply of earth staples they work well.
Could have saved a bunch of time if you just wrapped some loops and staked them. After a month or so you could pull the stakes.
I could have. But depending on the spacing between the rings of the spiral, that might restrict what plants I might use in the future. I think this way gives me a little more versatility for plant spacing.
Why not use tubing? Laura from Garden Answer on CZcams uses a lot of tubing and uses tape on long rows.
Oops, wrote this too soon!
Drip tubing emitted are prone to clogging so stick to tape on your bigger beds. Tubing is good in raised beds.
That should have said try heating the tubing with a hair dryer to remove the memory
Rotate the drip tubing slightly and they will lie flat
Thought this video would be a comparison of drip tape and drip tubing. It wasn't.
It ain't got no gas in it umhum.
View the video from Epic Homesteading. Different ideas on running tubing / tape in raised beds. czcams.com/video/ddlMFuUMYcs/video.html (My Garden Is Almost Empty)
Why bother with mainline at all? Why not just run a spiral of drip tubing? You really complicated this.
As we've documented in many videos since this one, our little 'spider' setup is really easy to remove and put back when we want to amend or flip the beds -- much easier than a spiral would be.
@@LazyDogFarm Why would a spiral be difficult to lift off the bed or lay back on the bed? It's nothing but a length of tube. I haven't seen whatever videos you're referring to.
@@Josef_R The spiral will come unwound. Also, from a mathematical perspective, planting in rows allows for more plants as opposed to planting in rings. Not a huge deal in a raised bed that's on 4' wide, but that's another reason to justify our setup.
@@LazyDogFarm Sounds like you're intentionally trying to make it difficult. A couple of stakes and the spiral will not unwind. And you're planting in a circle. You're trying to fit a square plug in a round hole.
You're making it waaaay too complicated. Drip tubing bends, and if you don't like bends just use elbows. The connection to the main line and using goof plugs as end plugs are the most likely places to fail and your increasing the chance of failure with so many connections
Neither, both leech plastic/plasticizers into "organic" vegetables
Mother Nature is no way near precise; neither should be your tubing spacing!