I'm currently using drip irrigation for all my in-ground fruit trees, but I'm not satisfied with the spotty coverage. Flooding individual basins with a hose works great, but it takes too much time and I often get side-tracked--so I end up washing out berms and wasting a lot of water.

Hello Ken!  I hear what you are saying.  Sal has an irrigation system and I"m sure there are a few others too.  I will be installing one in about 2 weeks.  The past 2 days, I've been installing 47 of my fig trees in the ground.  I am planting them on a hill which means I have to put my emmitters about 6 inches on the high side from the base.  I've been researching this for quite some time because I knew this day would come.  I think in order to maximize ever drop of water, you have to create a moat of mulch around the tree.  Since mine are on a hill, I will have to build a high moat on the low side.  Otherwise when it rains, the water will wash away a good portion of needed water.

Ken,

Have you tried a shrubbler, soaker dripline or emitter tubing? I use each of them. Those links point to DripWorks, however, there are local solutions of the same kind in most places across the country. I purchase tubing and emitters locally from Ewing (irrigation).

Dennis,

Jon lives on a hill and his backyard orchard has a nice irrigation setup that I do not recall. Maybe he can offer some advice.

JD

FYI. These pictures are from the DripWorks site.

Shrubbler


1/4" Soaker Drip Line


1/2" Emitter Tubing

I just place my emitters in a circle around the tree. small trees get emitters placed at 4-8-12 o clock. medium and large trees get emitters placed at 3-6-9-12 o clock . during the heat of the summer my watering schedule is twice a day for 15 minutes giving each large tree  1 gal of water at each watering. The important part of installing a irrigation system is to run a test after you have finished the installation to assure you know how much water is being put down. Take a 1 gal jug and drop an emitter into it and run the system for a preset amount of time. then you know how much water that emitter will put out. Even though the emitters are rated there are to many variables, such as number of emitters, water pressure, gravity, that can change the rating.

There are probably a number of different solutions that work well for irrigation.  I live 5 miles from the Ocean so I get plenty of wind.  Even so, I have found that the 90 degree microsprinklers sold at Lowes do a great job even in 15 mile an hour winds.  This might be different with a different brand.  My sprinklers have lots of droplets coming out, not just mist.  At some point higher winds might not be so great.   I can always wait if I need to till evening or the next day or two when the wind dies down.  Scroll down to see second picture of my system that covers the entire root area thoroughly.
http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=4741434

Every situation is different. You have the issue of getting sufficient coverage (dispersal) sufficient volume, application rate, to minimize runoff, and to allow the water to soak into the soil, which depends on soil type and density, etc., minimizing evaporation, etc.

If you use a 1 gpH emitter and need apply 60 gallons of water,  than means a run time of 60 hours (2-1/2 days). If you used 4 emitters to cover the same area, then you cut your run time to 15 hours to get 60 gallons.

Then there are issues of clogging, which is a problem here with soaker hoses and drippers with small orifices because of the high salt content in our water.

I had a somewhat unique problem, in that I have a fairly steep slope, so runoff is an issue. I chose to solve this issue by putting 1 gpM emitters up hill from my plants, allowing the water to soak in as it flowed down hill, and capturing any excess behind a berm downhill of the plants, and allowing it to finish soaking in at that point. The emitters I chose, from Irritrol, are adjustable to 10 gpM, but that is a flow rate that is too much to fast, and I have them adjusted down to 1 gpM or less. But they do not have clogging issues like lesser flow emitters did.

Here is what they looks like at 10 gpM I ave the adjusted down so that you can barely tell the are on.


I have them wide open to put large volumes of water on my banana plats, which are on level ground.

I want to have a drip system that will take care of my figs in pots if we need to go away on short notice as well as relieving me of having to water the trees every day.  What is the best/most reliable system I could install for pots and also what is a good timer to put on the faucet?

Thanks,

noss

Thanks All, for your responses. I should have mentioned that I'm interested in sprayers primarily for my larger trees; drip seems to work just fine on the little ones, and yes, I've used a variety of emitter styles to apply the water. It's only when there are 6-10 emitters around a single tree, and still lots of dry areas, that it seems to be a problem. The trees don't seem to mind, but I think they would do better with a more uniformly-moist rooting zone.

Ken, The avocado groves here have often use to 180 deg sprayers, at the trunk,m spraying out, to get a 360 pattern, and not get the trunk wet. They also alternate halves, so that one half is more dry, which help keep down the root rot and fungus issues in avocados. Much of that may not be a concern for you, but will expand the conceptual part of the discussion that may get someone else's thinking stimulated. As a follow-on to what I posted earlier, UC Davis is using micro sprinklers in their large orchards (with trees are are as much as 30' in diameter - mulberries, figs, stone fruits, etc). They do it because the soil is such heavy clay, that any faster application rate just becomes run-off, and provides no water to the plants.

Jon--good info; thanks. Do you happen to know any specifics about the avocado orchard sprayers, or the ones they're using at UCD? I assume they would work on a drip-style set-up, i.e., 5/8" poly line and relatively low pressure, rather than PVC without a pressure regulator?

The ones at UC Davis were micro-sprayers of some sort, with a pretty fine spray.

Jon, you've got me thinking.  There are so many different variables.  My soil is sandy and I use Dripworks 1/4 soaker dripline in my raised beds for veggies.  They have emitters every 6" because the cone of water distribution in my sandy soil is narrower than loamy or clayey soils.  I would think that one could use them around a tree, but that makes me  wonder:  Is it desirable to cover as much of the root system as possible?  I don't know.  By the way, I have read how water stress and heat can cause figs to drop fruit.  What about when the trees are bearing?  Is it possible to cause fruit splitting with irrigation?  We had a drought year last summer and it seemed like I got more splitting but my trees were only 2 years old.
Ken, the item number is 87865.  Yes the water hits the trunks.  I assumed that is no problem because it dries so quick.  Low hanging leaves were virtually no problem.  I set the two sprinklers so they went around them.  This did require a little extra 1/4 inch hose.

Here are some great places to get information about drip irrigation.
Al
Burlington County NJ  z6

http://www.rainbird.com/homeowner/products/drip/index.htm

http://www.toromicroirrigation.com/ProductFiles/pdf/ALT142_What_Is_Drip_article.pdf

http://www.irrigationtutorials.com/dripguide.htm

http://www.dripworksusa.com/

Tim, Jon, thanks for the information.  Who can tell me how long will it take to give each tree 1 gallon of water with 47 microsprinklers on a 3 leg line?   I installed 47 fig trees on a hill Saturday.   I rented a one man auger which in my mind should be called A 2 MAN AUGER!!!  Man what a challenge!  That darn thing was in 3 parts and was heavy as heck!  I had to back my truck up to my hill and push it off my truck just to get it off!  Then I had to drag it 77 feet up, down, left right to drill my holes.  It took a lot of strength just to hold it in place on the hill, then giving it gas and holding on was another story.  Needless to say, I only banged my right knee once.  A huge knot came up and the blood started to flow.  I'm a pretty big guy but man I was in some pain!  My left knee, hip and ribs was bruised bad but I had to finish the holes with 7 more to go.   I had to finish and I did.  It took me 5 hours to drill all 47 holes using a 12inch bit but I survived!  A little, banged up, bloody and bruised but fine.

1  min to 6 weeks. The point is you have to know the GPH or GPM of your emitters or sprinklers before you can calculate volume. Other wise it is like asking how far your car will go on a tank of gas, without specifying the size of the tank and the MPG of the car.

Dennis
You will need to determine the water pressure at the source than calculate the pressure loss through your piping system. Keep in mind it takes a lot of pressure to push the water up a 77 foot hill.
When you have your feed line up at the top of the hill use a 5 gal bucket and measure the time it takes to fill.  You may need to use a controller that has 3 separate feeds. If I were designing your system I would create a complete loop and feed it from the center, this way you are more balanced with your pressure losses in your lateral lines to your drippers. Your should be using pressure compensating drippers on  this system. You see a non pressure compensating dripper will allow more water to flow out the first dripper and as the pressure drops in the lateral they will flow less and less.   There should be a number code on your dripper that let you know how much water they deliver.

Al
Burlington County NJ
Z6

Dennis, I'm not an irrigation expert and it is clear everyone has a different situation and on top of that in math you can get the correct answer in different ways.  Having said that, I will share what works for me.  I measured the amount of gallons per hour on my spigot at 560.  My emitters on the microsprinklers put out 10 gph.  I have a well and the pressure is not ever over 50 PSI and it works great on 25 microsprinklers at a time (250gph?).  I don't know how much pressure they require to work but the output is uniform.  I used a 1/2 inch mainline probably 200 feet long.  I measured the output of each microsprinkler as 7/10 inch per hour in a rain gauge.  I know what a given amount of rain does for my soil so I give them what I think they need based on rainfall.  People talk about making the soil wet up to 1/2 of field capacity, but I don't get that scientific.  I just want it to be moistened evenly to where I've seen the plants grow well in drought.  Usually, I read soil needs about one inch per week but YMMV.  My sandy soil needs more.  You're doing a larger number of trees but if you had to you could use 3/4 inch mainline because it has less resistance like I had to in my veggie garden for drip.  Also, you could break it up into 2 zones or sections if you needed to.  Al's idea of starting at the top makes sense to me.
OMG, I watched my neighbor and his friend use the auger to build his fence.  Two big guys and they were working!

Dennis,
Energy is required to move the water higher. It takes 0.434 psi to raise water one foot. Conversely, one psi will raise water 2.31 feet. If is figure correctly it will take 33 psi of your supply just to get the water to the top of the hill.

Al
Burlington County NJ
Z6

Dennis

Thanks Al, Jon and Tim.  Whenever I use a 75 foot hose to water my trees I don't have a loss of pressure.  But I guess you guys are right.  I'll run my main line and test it with one microsprinkler and see how much water comes after 15 minutes.