Irrigation Just About Complete

"But what are you going to do when you leave for a trip or take off somewhere?" - That's what people sometimes say when they hear about my lofty farming ideas.  Their concern that I will leave for a random desert getaway for 5 days or fly up to Napa to pig out and get drunk on wine and my garden will suffer, my plants will die.  For those REALLY close to me I'm sure they are selfishly thinking "God, I really don't want to hear him complain and throw a fit when he comes back and everything is dead!"

That's funny pipe (love that stuff!) with a
3/4" NPT to inline 25PSI pressure regulator
to a 3/4" NPT to 1/2 irrigation line.

Fair enough.  So I'm putting in drip irrigation, a personally liberating addition and plant saving solution to my tendency to take trips for more than a day or night.  Since my garden is located on what was previously a beautiful lawn I have stubbed out sprinklers all over the place.  I flagged them when I started this process to make them easy to find (smart!).  Now I've tapped into them and plumbed up drip irrigation.  I'm using 1/2" trunk lines with 1/4" line with embedded 1/2 GPH emitters 6" on center.  Toro makes the 1/4" drip and it's wonderful stuff, a bit pricey at $18 per 100' roll but it works well and appears to be made well.

Pros

• Plants aren't dependent on my to water them - I can leave (which I will) and they won't die
• More efficient use of water

Cons

• Same amount of water delivered to the entire bed.  This can be a problem with plants that have different water needs
• Additional expenditure
• Detracts from the naturally feel of the yard - black hosing (much with a blue stripe on it) sticks out pretty bad
• Get in the way when casually cultivating soil

Similar to the other one except here I used a broken
pipe as my opportunity to tap into the sprinkler system.
The wide black pipe is flexible PVC (awesome!
Schedule 40, uses same fittings, glue, etc.)

My unofficial plan is to only rely on the irrigation when I'm away or otherwise mentally distracted (work, woman, whatever) - otherwise I will continue my daily watering therapy.

Please ignore the excessive glue on the photo to the left, there IS a reason for it but it's a long story ;0)