This is my third year watering gardens from drip irrigation systems, and I’ve been very pleased with it. It saves water, time, frustration. It stretches a dinky little half inch thunderstorm into two good waterings. Most importantly, it saves food production, and without needing power or city water supply. In short, it’s a prepper’s friend. I talked some about the original system in this post.
I remember setting up the first system was a little intimidating, as I’m not naturally Ms. HandyWoman and had no idea what I was doing. Since I had one more bit of garden to get drip irrigation for, I thought you might like a play by play of how to set up such a system.
What you need to do rain barrel drip irrigation
We use commercial rain barrels for convenience. They have a filtering grate on top and an outlet with a regular garden hose attachment spigot on the bottom – and preferably a second spigot midway up the barrel.
The spigot needs to connect to the hose that runs from barrel to garden. One of these female hose repair connectors does the trick.
This female hose connector links the garden hose spigot of the barrel to the hose.
One can use any old hose that reaches from barrel to garden, but I used a 1/2″ run line designed for drip irrigation systems.
Another connector at the edge of the garden links the run line to the drip line. I just used a simple slip-on type as shown below. I ordered it with the rest of the stuff I got years ago from an irrigation supply company, but I saw similar things at a big box hardware store last week.
Slide the run hose onto one end of this connector and the drip line onto the other, and you’re good to go.
Then you need enough drip line to cover your garden region. I’ve set mine so no plant is more than six inches from the nearest drip hose, and that’s worked well.
How to set up the drip irrigation system
Find a gutter downspout from your roof that’s at higher elevation than the garden you want to water.
Level a spot for the water barrel near the downspout and place the barrel. We set ours a foot or two away from the house, so when we took the barrels out for winter the water from the gutter wouldn’t be dropped right next to the house’s foundation.
You can buy different gutter pieces to suit your need from home supply places, or cut and drill the existing pieces to rework them (which is what I did; the metal is soft enough for easy manipulation). In any case, you need to direct the downspout water through the grate into the barrel.
I cut the downspout shorter then redrilled it to re-attach the side piece to shunt the water into a barrel.
Then it’s just attaching the run line hose to the barrel’s spigot, connect the run line to the drip line at the edge of the garden, place the drip line for good coverage of the plants, then fold over the end of the drip line and seal it with a ziptie. I found folding the hoses down (toward the drip holes) provided something of a hook that helped keep the drip line stable.
Sealing the end hose by folding it under helps anchor the end of the drip line.
And There She Drips! Success!
Alternative drip irrigation plans for budget preppers
I went with commercial products because I could get them for reasonable money and thought they’d give an inexperienced person the best chance of success. Now that I’ve got more experience, here are some lower-budget options that would work:
Instead of commercial rain barrels, any water-safe tanks would do so long as you can direct the gutter outflow from the roofs through a screen into them and get a standard garden spigot on the bottom.
Run line, connector, and commercial drip line could be swapped out for any old hose that’s long enough that you don’t mind dedicating to the cause. You’d just run the hose from barrel to garden, loop the hose around the garden as you liked, double over the hose end, and secure it with a zip-tie. A power drill could place the drip holes every so often. My drip line has holes every foot.
I found this site helpful when I was researching my system. (We have no financial ties to this company.)
Good post, Spice!
Thanks, Merman!
You mentioned that a second spigot midway up the barrel would be helpful but I didn’t see where you expanded on that. Would it be so you could still draw water to fill a watering can? Run a second line? or something else?
I can speak to that.
You can put quick-release couplings on your drip hoses and the upper and lower spigots.
You can then attach the hose to the upper spigot, open it up and empty just the top half of the barrel, giving the garden only half the water, saving the rest for another day. It gives you versatility.
All of our barrels except the last one we put in have two spigots… we put the barrel with one spigot on the biggest garden plot.
That is an excellent idea! I’m glad I asked. Sort of like putting it on a timer.