When we first moved in to this house, the back garden irrigation was handled by a single drip hose wound through all the beds. This hose started at the water spigot, went under the first bed edge, up into the bed, looped around in the bed, went back underground, then back up into the next bed. This continued for all four beds.
This setup had a few problems. First, one of the hoses was severely degraded from laying in the sun so long. Second, the single hose nature of the setup meant the decayed section was nearly impossible to replace. I tried, but was unable to make the setup not leak. Finally, the spray wasn’t directed in any form, wasting a lot of water.
So, we replaced the setup with a more directed irrigation system. First, Matt dug from the spigot, alongside one bed, into the center between all the beds, then up into each one. He ran irrigation line up into each bed from this center line, through the holes into each bed.
Once we had the center lines in, we were able to easily connect more hose, loop it about the bed based on the locations of the plants we’d already put in, and then put in smaller hoses and drippers to reach each plant. We also used elbows where we wanted more exact turns.
