I then got the idea of using a regular lawn sprinkler to try and catch a larger area of plants then just move the sprinkler to another area to get another cluster.  This worked real good for a while, only having to move the sprinkler around 2-3 times, leaving it in that spot for 30 min so as to water everybody real good. 

 

While this worked way better than the hose, there was still the issue that we did need to go out there to move the sprinkler multiple times.  Also there was the issue that if we go out of town, or maybe just don't have the opportunity to do it or don't want to do it that day.  Our answer was an automated irrigation system.

 

This would consist of a water line running from the pipe supplying the hose spigot, running out into the orchard, then through the grape area, through the raised beds and terminating in the ground level plantings.  At this time, sprinklers are going to be used, until we can figure a better way to do the irrigation of the raised beds. 

 

A sprinkler head will be placed in the middle of the orchard where its 360 degree spray will cover everybody.  Another sprinkler will be placed at the edge of the orchard by the grapes, where it'll catch the remainder of the trees as well as the central cluster of grapes and other tire bushes.  From there, two more sprinklers will branch out in both directions away from the last mentioned sprinkler, to cover the grapes that are planted on the far edges of the area.  Another sprinkler will be placed in the middle of the raised beds to cover all of them, and the last sprinkler will be placed at a central point between the blueberry bush area and the last outlying area which has the ground level plantings.

 

The first part of the project was a fun undertaking, using a trenching shovel to dig the trench for the PVC pipe all the way from the house, straight over to the orchard, doing a left turn, going straight through the orchard, then off to an angle through the grapes, through the raised beds, another right turn and through to the ground plantings, along with the branch offs by the grapes.  The main line totaled approximately 180', the branch offs were about 15' each. 

 

After the digging, I had to cut the PVC where the garden hose spigot is to glue in a tee, then I added a short length of PVC pipe with an adapter to allow me to screw on a sprinkler valve, then another adapter is added where I can then start gluing in the 10' lengths of PVC pipe, one after another, using couplings, until I get to the point where I turn, then until I get to the points where I have to put tees for the sprinklers.  The sprinkler setup consists of an adapter to accomodate 1/2" threaded PVC pipe nipples, which are over 1' in length, with the sprinkler screwed to the other end of the nipples.  The branch off area required a pipe cross. 

 

The sprinkler valve has a little bleeder valve on it that allows you to manually open the pneumatic diaphragm to start the flow of water to the sprinklers.  This is how we tested and use the sprinkler system right now.  In the evening, we just turn that valve and fire up the system for 30 min or so, and turn it off again, job done. 

 

I will have to run power line over to where the pipe is at so I can add the outdoor box that will accomodate the timer for the sprinkler valve.  Once I get that hardware set up, all I have to do is program the timer, and the entire job of watering the gardens will be completely out of our hands!

 

After the first run with the irrigation system last year, we found that we went through 3x as much water as we normally did without the system, so with this, we had to make some updates. 

 

The first idea I had was to do a drip irrigation system.  I had a bunch of PVC pipe lying around so I started setting up a system.  For the raised beds and our berry patch I ran a grid of PVC pipe with small holes drilled along the lengths of pipe to piss water onto the raised beds and onto each berry plant.  For the fruit trees we had a bunch of old water hose that we ran around the orchard and had small holes drilled along the lengths of hose over each tree to also piss water onto the trees. 

 

This idea was destined to failure before it started, I should've seen it coming, there was nowhere near enough water pressure to push water all the way through the system hard enough to reach the farthest ends of the hoses and pipe in the system.  Ok, the next idea was soaker hose.  After doing a big time retrofit using some bulk soaker hose, and a combination of garden hose with homemade couplings to lay the soaker hose ONLY over the fruit trees and have solid hose between them, I found that we had the same exact problem, not enough pressure to piss out water at the farthest reaches of the system.  First though was "what the fuck?!?!"

 

Ok then, I got to thinking.  After reading and seeing on TV all these urban gardeners who planted a farm's worth of fruits and veggies on a very small parcel of land, utilizing every bit of space available, I got to looking at the orchard, and seen a shitload of space between the trees that was doing nothing but supporting grass, what a waste of space.

 

The first thing I did was relocate our ground level garden plot from the southeast end of the property over to the south end of the orchard.  The next thing I did was start relocating all of the grape tire gardens from their spread out area east of the orchard to the east half of the orchard, among the fruit trees.  I also relocated all the berry plants to the east half of the orchard along with the grapes as well, organizing a shitload of individual tire gardens among the fruit trees.  Future plans will be to relocate the raised beds to the west half of the orchard among those fruit trees. 

 

The next thing I did was tap into the old irrigation line and put a spur line going over to the south end of the orchard where I put a sprinkler head on to water the ground level garden and the fruit trees on the far southern end of the orchard.  I also put sprinkler heads back on the two ports that covered the original orchard and the one port for the raised beds.  With only three sprinklers going, that'll use way less water than the six sprinkler heads we had going last year.  We will also put a fence around the entire orchard to protect EVERYTHING from the critters.

 

As for the tire gardens we set up all along the west and south sides of the house, I installed a tap in the garden hose pipe and hooked up another sprinkler valve with a tee line branching out two lines of soaker hose to cover all of the tire gardens.  This sprinkler valve is hooked up independently of the original sprinkler valve, but on the same timer module.  The orchard sprinkler valve will come on first for 15 minutes then the tire garden sprinkler valve will come on for 10 minutes, this way there isn't a drop in water pressure for the sprinkler heads when a lot of the water pressure is used to piss water out from the soaker hoses. 

 

So far this system passed its test when we went on vacation to Chicago, nothing died, everything was nice and moist.  With the raised beds moved into the orchard, that will eliminate one more sprinkler head and will save that much more water while making the garden management more convenient for us.  With the sheer number of feet of hose that would have to be run for all the trees, grapes, and berries, along with all the gardens, even with everything clustered together, we would still have the same problem that we've been having with soaker hoses, not enough water pressure.  At that rate it will be likely that we will just stick with the sprinklers for the main garden area since the majority of the water will actually be hitting edible plants instead of lawn.  Of course when we're through, the acutal ground between the tires and trees will be covered in mulch so nothing will grow up around the plants.