I Think I Just Learned a Lesson About Irrigation

[thankful_k]

So, I hooked up a drip irrigation system for my fruit trees that I planted back in March. My well water is hideously hard. Seriously, like 25 grains. And there is fine sediment in it. It's insane. Like gravel coming out of the tap.

Well I noticed one or two of my fruit trees not doing so well. I checked, soil is drying out under the mulch, and there is hardly any water coming out of the little brown drip hoses! WTH! They're only 3 months old. Then it hit me. No filtering on the water, the ports are clogging up.

So I ordered a filter housing for 20 microns, and 200 mesh pre-filter that I'll install next week. Until then, I guess it's manual watering for a few days.

 

[UrbanHunter]

I find that I need to constantly monitor the emitters on my drip irrigation system, most of the holes are just larger than a pin and it doesn't take much to clog one up. I usually carry spares around with me and change them out if I find a clogged on (you usually get soaked using this method, so don't use if you are the Wicked Witch of the West). I take my clogged emitters to a sink to clean and then use them as replacements later.

If you are using the brown line with uniformly spaced holes you can take a sewing pin out to the line and clean each hole with the pin, the gunk will still be in the line so you may need to remove 1 end of the line and push water through the line to clean out the gunk, If you used a Tee you may need to cover the hole on the Tee so the water runs through the brown hose. Even if you have filters gunk will clog things over time, you just have to learn to monitor and adapt.

 

[Caribou]

A friend had an avocado orchard and he had to walk his orchard daily to check the emitters because he found clogged ones most days.

 

[backlash]

We have the same problem here.
I have to replace most emitters yearly.
My wife has learned to check the soil to make sure it's wet and lets me know when it's not wet.

 

[montanabill]

I gave up on most of my emmiters off our hard well water. I use a multi gang hose bib set up I got at a yard sale. It has nice galvanized pipe and 10 1/4 turn ball cocks that hook up to sections of old garden hose that I have shortened to reach my eight tree orchard. A simple two hour timer on the inlet and i soak deeply half of my orchard at a time. Gotta water those fruit trees deep.