Has anyone tried "deep watering" systems on their figs? Below is a pic of the idea at its simplest:

 


I use them on my muscadines and I am thinking about installing some on my figs this fall so all the water goes to the root zone rather than feeding grass and weeds. If I do, how deep should I aim for the root zone on my figs?

Would that take forever for the soil to absorb the water? Ive seen the long pipe attachments that you stab into the ground and turn on the hose which looked like it would work well.

I am using some left-over 6in diameter pipe, cut into 2 1/2ft sections, over 3gal in volume, so there is no problem for me. Also. When  you drill the holes along the wet zone it speeds-up the water outflow so it really don't take too long. Of course it all depends on how much water you give your trees or vines. I use a 3 gal bucket to carry the water so it works perfectly for me.

If I needed more water volume quickly I would probably just use bigger PVC pipe, 8 or 10 in. You could dump a lot of water into 3ft of 10 inch pipe, yet still direct it down to the root zone instead of watering the weeds on top.

In the future I am thinking about installing such a pipe with each tree I put in. I think it would work OK since I plan to keep my trees cut back to a smallish size. But it would not work if you were going to let your figs get as big as those I saw at the orchard last week. But then again, I would work myself to death watering a tree that large with a 3gal can ;-)

I personally try to trickle water all my plants, same idea with the water penetrating deep. I use a 5 gallon bucket with a small hole drilled in the bottom. It takes about 5 minutes to empty and goes deep into the soil as opposed to just staying on the surface.

Saw a guy growing a beautiful bald cypress N. Ga's brick hard dry red clay. He had 3, 3" pipes, 18" long set out 18" from the trunk of the tree (no holes in the side of the pipes). He filled them with water once a day and dropped a handful of fertilizer down one once a year. I did the same thing when I planted my cypress up here. I haven't been keeping up with the watering and my poor tree has got bag worms, which is a clear sign of a stressed tree... It only works if you use it.

Very good idea. Effective and can be economic too.
I wonder if the triangular setup would be better, providing all around watering to each tree.

6" piping is nice large size. Would you periodically pull the pvc out? I would guess the roots would invade the holes pretty quick.

I'd think that eventually the pipe would fill with dirt, leaves, etc, reducing its effectiveness.  Is it easy to pull it out periodically to clean it? One thing you could to would be to put a small diameter screen on the top and possibly inside, near the holes.  Also, do you cap the bottom, or is it left open?  How many holes, are they facing the tree or all around, etc. 

I use a similar principal when I pot my trees, but I bet I could do it better.  I quickly dig or push 3 holes around the base of the tree and fill these with mulch or pine bark instead of potting mix.  My idea is that the water should flow into those faster than the surrounding soil, thereby reducing runoff and watering deeper and more effectively.  But if I wanted to do it right I'd push 3 pipes with holes into each pot.

I don't think roots should grow into them unless they stay filled with water.  Roots won't grow into air.

You can make a simple screen cover for the pipe, or just clean it out every year or two. As for roots in the wholes, since most of the time it is only air in the pipe, the roots will air-prune themselves so there is no problem.

For inground trees is it really necessary for the deep watering?  In my climate I don't need to water them, I usually will once frost passes just to try and force them to break bud but otherwise after the first year I find I don't need to.  I could understand in a warmer and drier climate it would be needed though.

This really does look like an excellent way to water trees and plants for that matter and I have seen people do it with annual plants with excellent results but never before have I seen it used for trees, but it makes a good ammount of sense and would probably help me with my other fruit trees for water, I just have to figure out how I want to go about it.

One of the advantages of this is that if you use liquid fert like MG, you get all the benefit down to your crop's roots instead of part being used up by grasses and weeds on the surface. And since I fertilize once a week until mid-summer, I end up with a LOT of weeds to pull around the base of trees and vines. The deep watering pipe helps eliminate that.

I would remove the grass and weeds around the base of your trees and put down down mulch to conserve moisture and control the vegetation.  Even with your system the grass will still be getting a lot of the moisture and fertilizer.

I use lots of mulch mixed with manure. But the Bermuda grass here will jump 1-2 ft to get back into that rich ring around the tree. At least deep watering slows it down some

Bermuda grass is tough to deal with.  All I can suggest is putting a barrier around the tree and filling it with mulch and keep the bermuda out with a weedeater or roundup.  Good luck.

I have used half inch pvc pipe

In my experience deep watering is a good way to do any in ground tree.

Yes indeed this is a good way to water and add Liquid type fertilizers to your plants. I used this method the last couple years on tomato plants. Two or three inch PVC pipe with small holes drilled into the bottom third. Pounded these into the ground next to my plants. Every other day or so in the heat of Summer I'd fill it up and plants would get slowly drip irrigated. Was able to later hook up 5 gallon bucket with half inch hose and spigot and use that to fill the pipes. Would mix up fertilizer in bucket and let it drain into the pipes. The only problem I had was that eventually the plants got so large it was a bit difficult to get water to the PVC pipe. So, place your pipe carefully, and make sure you have a few feet above ground so u can easily fill it up!

I have seen a similar approach used for tree plantings.  I have not done it myself.

They used the black flex pipe that is already drilled.  Wrap that with a couple of wraps of landscape fabric.  Put in the planting hole to loop under the root ball.  Fill with 1' stone so it does not collapse.  Waters both sides and the bottom.

I removed a healthy two-year-old fig recently to make room for a different variety. I had irrigated it on a drip system, but also soaked its basin once or twice weekly with a hose, watering quite deeply. To remove it, I rigged up a tripod of 4x4s and hooked a "come-along" to the trunk so I could crank it up out of the ground. To my surprise, virtually all of the roots were within about two inches of the surface, and came up in continuous mat (kind of like pulling up a tablecloth by pinching it in the middle, and lifting). The absence of any deep roots made me question how well the water was being used, and prompted me to start using spray heads on some of my trees.

I also used the same method to remove a Kadota I wasn't happy with, and it had deep, tenacious roots that I eventually had to cut off with loppers. I don't know how someone could find out (without causing a lot of damage) which trees' roots are shallow and spreading, and which ones go down deep, but some varieties might do better with frequent, shallow watering than with deep soaking.

Ken, now I know how shallow some of the mesquite trees are. The latest monsoon hit the other day and it looked like a tornado went thru. Many trees 2 ft thick trunks just toppled over. Fortunately, my figs are almost all in pots and sort of low so none of them were affected.


In regards to those "deep soak" tubes, I used to use them until I learned that out west, deep watering from the surface is the best to flush out the accumulated salts. Otherwise, when we finally get the rain, a lot of trees end up suffering from salt burn. The deep watering flushes out the salts.

I wonder if this would help increase survivability in colder zones by having more roots further down.