Irrigation Fun!

Good morning, friends! As we are getting into the head of the summer here in Lake County I thought that it was going to be important to do some segments on Irrigation. Truly, I can go on and on about this topic, and I probably will. There are many facets of irrigation, scheduling, soil consideration, plant grouping and needs, auditing, irrigation types, etc. To start, I want to take some time to go over the different types of irrigation methods available. I’ll be covering what I consider to be the least expensive method that is very openly available to the average homeowner/tenant to the most expensive option that’s going to be most commonly seen in high-end residences and commercial/public settings.

Now, when I'm talking about irrigation systems, I'm specifically talking about the irrigation valves, for the most part. I'll be putting out a short video tomorrow to talk about the first two least expensive most common, end-user-friendly irrigation methods. They are a couple of methods that we use at our home. They are the all to familiar human with a hose method of watering and the battery operated hose bib timer method. I'll be sure to show ya'll what we're using at our home but I also want to take this opportunity to write it all out as well.

In my own personal experience the old fashioned method of walking outside with your hose to water plants is both a great and terrible method. It's great because in this way, you're checking on your garden on a routine basis and you can see clearly just how well or poorly your plants are doing and what kind of attention they need. The downside, it's more difficult now to be flexible with your day. In our scorching hot summers I'm out morning and evening anticipating that I'm going to need to have someone come out and keep an eye on the garden if my husband and I need to leave town. Luckily, we use both the hose and remote control hose bib timer at our home, so at the very least, we know we can set up our bed to be watered at regular intervals.

The hose bib timer is likely something that you've seen if you've ever taken a moment to walk down the irrigation aisle of your local hardware store. It's a basic controller that threads directly into your hose bib and, depending on the brand, can be set to pretty regular intervals. These are not absolute break the bank expensive and what's nice about them is that with the right equipment you can just set them up with standard polyline adapters. We are currently using ours to start some clover seed for a future walkway and I'm looking forward to showing that tomorrow. The hose bib timers are easy to use and easy to program, but they're not as durable or as flexible with scheduling as the irrigation systems connected to a controller with timer wire.

I'm sure most people have seen your everyday automatic irrigation controller. They might seem intimidating with all of their options and controls but they're actually pretty simple when you start getting into the details of them. In the next few weeks I also want to take the opportunity to talk about the valves that are compatible with those automatic controllers. These are the systems that you are likely going to want someone who knows what they're doing at your home for, since they generally involve tapping into your main water line and adding on manifolds. Until we get there, feel free to take a look at some of the items we are using in our landscape that I'll be talking about this week! Though I've added links in, please keep in mind that I'm not endorsing these products; I'm including them for informational purposes only. My husband and I use our local hardware store as well as Sonoma County-based irrigation suppliers for our landscape.

If you ever have questions about your irrigation system or would like help to figure out some basic irrigation controls, feel free to reach out, and I will be happy to chat!