Soaker hose

We have decieded to install soaker hose in our raised bed garden and see how well it works compared to standard drip line and drip emitters. One thing I did was use about a 8" piece of drip line tube to connect the soaker hose to our eight head emitter. This will allow the water to flow through the standard drip line and into the soak er that is in the soil. If I were to hook up the soaker hose right into the eight head emitter, I would have water leaking from the soaker hose where I don't want or need it. The pictures should explain what I mean better:

Here is the soaker hose and a few bags of metal stakes to hold the soaker hose in the soil. The soaker hose allows water to seep through itself thus slowly watering the plants around it.

Here is my eight head emitter that is attachted to our main water suplly line. I connected roughly an 8" piece of 1/8" drip line tube to the emitter and used  an elbow to attatch the drip line to the soaker hose. This allows me to use  a metal stake to secure the soaker hose at the top of our garden soil and also lets me keep the water off the wall and the top of our raised garden frame. Sure we get rain from time to time so it's not a huge deal if water drips onto the wall or frame of our raised garden, but to me it just looks more clean and I don't want to waste any water by watering a wall :)

Make old junk into plant containers!

Thought I'd share with you what we've done for our part in recycling unwanted concrete water pipes from the past.

I found these great old concrete drainage pipes and thought, "you know, a plant would look awesome in this thing!". So next thing you know I used all my strength to put these heavy old relics into my truck, took a short break then moved them into our yard :) They really are heavy and when I look at them I wonder how I got them here...I say the same thing about most of the yard and garden art we have! lol

So here is a few pics of where we put these old water drainage pipes and how we ran drip line up the middle to help water our future plants.

This is where we placed the smaller of the two water pipes. Don't mind the rain drops in the pictures,the rain finally showed up and made it a great day to work outside! This second image shows the tools you will need to complete this project: Something sharp to poke a hole into your main drip line, an elbow connector and some 1/8" drip line tube.

Next, you'll have to lay the heavy water drainage pipe on it's side to get to the main water line that we need to connect to. Once you have room to work, you'll need to dig down and find you main water supply  line. Remember to dig carefully so as not to damage your water line!

Now poke a hole into the main water supply line and insert the elbow drip line connector. Place the 1/8" drip line onto the elbow before inserting the elbow into the main water line to make things easier. You will  also want to push the 1/8" drip line into the hole of the water pipe so when you put the water drainage pipe back up, you can grab it.

Fill the hole back in with dirt and stand the drainage pipe back up. You should now be able to look down inside the pipe and see your dip line tube. You will also want to note that the line should not have any part of the concrete drainage pipe sitting on it. Your new 1/8" drip line tube should be cut off no less than  6" above the opening and capped off until you have a plant to place. I like to leave a little extra drip line, about 6"-10", and coil it under the dirt beneath the plant in case you have to ever make repairs such as adding a different size emitter head. A lot of times once you put on an emitter, the sun will bake it onto the drip line making you to have to cut the drip line just before the emitter, thus shortening your drip line and eventually causing you to use in-line connectors which increases the chance of leaks. (leaks would not be a problem in this set up, however they would be if your doing horizonatal repairs, so it's a good habit to create when installing drip lines.)

Now the job is complete!

For ease of access you can see I've kept the drip line sticking out of the top of this great looking water drainage pipe for now. It's just waiting to water some interesting plant in the near future. The easy part is over, the hard part is choosing a  cool plant to put in it :) You could plant something that hangs down, something that grows up, or even plant both to give an extra cool look!

Fixing the drip line to the citrus after punching a hole through it for drip line stake

The first image shows a big rut made by the large volume of  water caused by the hole in the drip line.

The next images is of clearing the rock  away to make the repairs.

Next dig down until you find the problem. I found a hole in two drip lines, so make sure you check all lines in the area so you don't have to dig it up again!

Now cut out the section of drip line with the holes in it.

Replace the cut out section with new 1/8" drip line and a in-line connector at each end.
Make sure to pay attention and not let any dirt get insdie the open drip line.

Now that you have made your repairs, turn on the water and check for leaks. As you can see we have water flowing out of our emmitters and zero leaks. Next bury the lines and put everything back how it was and nobody will ever know you made a bonehead move and poked holes in your drip line - unless you post it online on your blog HA HA HA!!!