Easy DIY Automatic Irrigation System for any Garden!

the easiest way to kill the plants in your garden is by just not giving them enough water but you can also kill your plants by giving them too much water and in order for your plants to really thrive they need the right amount of water on a consistent schedule and while you can achieve that just by hand watering on a regular basis it's not as effective and it's certainly not as convenient I'm Kyle from urban farmstead and in this video I'm going to show you how to set up a very simple automatic irrigation system right from your faucet [Music] the materials you need for your project might be a little bit different than mine and the main factor is going to be the distance from your faucet to your garden but they should be pretty similar now I was able to find all of these at my local nursery and I always recommend you check your local nursery or your local hardware store to source materials before starting any project if you can't find these items or similar items at your local nursery or hardware store have them all listed in the description below to where you can find similar items online now the most important one is going to be the automatic irrigation controller and there's a lot of different brands that make similar items so just use whichever one is available and makes the most sense to you this should be able to hook up right to your faucet and usually it takes batteries now there are some that wire in there are some that are solar-powered the battery ones will last a long time if you check your batteries or change your batteries just once a season that should do so battery-powered controller the hooks your faucet and soaker hose now this is a 50 foot soaker hose the length of your soaker hose is gonna depend on the area that you're irrigating so there's a lot of different options for lengths maybe you need a couple of them for me I just need one 50 foot length and then I've got some half-inch flex tubing and this is the tubing that I'll connect from my faucet to my garden I only have about 4 or 5 feet to go you might have a longer span or if your faucets right next to the garden you won't need this at all you can go right to your soaker hose and that would be very convenient other than that I just have a few fittings to get from this half-inch flex tubing to my soaker hose these are just some general adaptors you're gonna probably find different ones at your hardware store or your nursery so I won't talk about the brand of these but these are what I found and they're gonna work great so let's get to it how or garden faucets like this are commonly referred to as hose bibbs or spigots and anytime I tap into one for an irrigation system I always like to add one of these gated y's so I always have access to fill a water can or use a garden hose irrigation components with hose threads like this rely on a rubber gasket to create their watertight seal so there's no need for teflon tape just tighten it down hand tight this is my first time using this controller and I'm not reviewing or promoting any brands so just use whatever's available in your area I'm using this 1/2 inch flex tubing also known as polly hose to span the gap from my controller to my garden so I'll need this hose thread adapter to make the connection but I'm using a tee fitting so that I have two connection points for maximum flow there are a lot of different options for Polly hose fittings but I prefer ones like this that press in then thread to tighten you might also choose to span this gap from your controller to your garden with PVC pipe a regular garden hose or a different material but I feel like this half-inch Polly hose is the most versatile affordable and effective option for a wide range of scenarios so that's why I'm choosing to use it for this video but use whatever you think is gonna work best for your garden now I'll attach my Polly hose to my soaker hose unlike hose threads pipe threads don't have a rubber gasket to create their watertight seal instead they rely on slightly beveled edges within their thread pattern so it's always important to use teflon tape to create that watertight seal [Music] if you've ever had the pleasure or more commonly displeasure of navigating the plumbing section in your local hardware store you've surely noticed that there's no shortage of options or different materials that you can use for any irrigation system so chances are the materials you find for your system will be at least slightly different than what I'm using for mine so just think of this as a general guide any time I'm using a soaker hose I like to tap into it from both ends so that I have consistent circular flow which usually means creating connection points for male and female fittings now I'll just stirring out the soaker hose and anchor it in place for the landscaping staple this flowerbed is about two feet wide and 25 feet long so it's simple up and back with a 50 foot soaker hose will provide excellent coverage but this simple and effective irrigation system can be adapted to pretty much any other garden scenario so I'll show you one other example of how I've used it in our raised garden beds it runs into this gated why and from the gated why it connects to silk ER hose so I have it connected at both ends of the soaker hose that is so that it gets equal irrigation on this side of the bed and on that side of the bed I just have the soaker hose kind of laid out to get really good coverage so this soaker hose I can just leave this on and irrigate about once or twice a week the coverage does appear patchy on the surface but just below this bed is completely saturated alright let's wrap up today's project I love that modern irrigation controllers have the option to hook up to bluetooth and Wi-Fi and well that's all convenient it's not exactly necessary because three of the most important factors in any irrigation system are frequency duration and consistency and that can be programmed into any irrigation controller I'll run this irrigation system for about 30 minutes twice a week but your irrigation schedule might be completely different than mine it really depends on the plants that you're growing and the composition of your soil the main reason I like to use soaker hose rather than establishing individual emitters for each plant is that this allows me to saturate the entire bed so that I can plant whatever I want without having to change out the system between crops and I'll know that the roots of those plants will reach out to fill the bed and that's it for this very basic but effective automatic irrigation system but for the main vegetable garden I have a completely different automatic irrigation system and I created an entire video for that so if you want to see that I'll add a link to it here otherwise if you have any questions about this irrigation system or any other general irrigation questions ask them in the comments below if you want to see more videos like this or any other upcoming videos on how i'm creating our new urban farmstead hit subscribe if you liked this video give it a thumbs up and otherwise I'll see you all next time you [Music]

Channel: Urban Farmstead

Views: 314,193

Keywords: Garden, gardening, homegrown, vegetable garden, urban farm, DIY, how to, organic, organic gardening, farm, farming, grow your own, start a garden, garden tips, gardening tips, Irrigation, automatic irrigation system, drip line, soaker hose, emitter line, how to water a vegetable garden, raised bed

Id: sCaT3Iurqwk

Length: 6min 57sec (417 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 26 2020