Perennially shrinking water tables lead to summer hosepipe bans; watering cans and sprinkler systems drench some potted plants and leave the rest bone-dry. And flash summer showers ruin everything. How’s a person supposed to effectively control the water they use on their pots and baskets? A good place to start would be drip irrigation. Drip irrigation isn’t a new technology †it’s been available to amateur gardeners since the 1980s †but it is an only recently affordable one. Whereas the earlier systems were the province of the wealthy gardener, a modern drip irrigation starter kit from watering giants Claber sets the home enthusiast back less than 25. For that money they’ll get 20 metres of feeding tube, 20 in-line drippers and all the fixings necessary to fit the system to a normal hose tap and start dripping. Compare that to three or four times the price in the â€80s and â€90s and it’s easy to see why drip irrigation has, until now, been regarded as something of a luxury. The low price of the kit itself isn’t the only financial incentive driving 21st century gardeners to drip irrigation. The technology saves money by making pot- and basket-watering efficient: with drip irrigation none of the water used goes to waste, which means the total volume of water used is significantly less. So what is drip irrigation? Drip irrigation works on the principle that pot plants and hanging baskets need water at the root. Unlike sprinkler systems, watering cans or hosepipes, which douse the pot in a simulated rain shower (half of which ends up on the patio), drip irrigation delivers water in single drops straight to the plants’ roots. While only a tiny portion of the water dumped from a watering can or hosepipe actually makes it through to soil and root systems, every drop dispensed from a drip irrigation nozzle ends up where it is needed. Basic drip irrigation is done by connecting a slimline feeder pipe to a regular outside tap. The pipe can be run along leaves, under flowerbeds and up posts to make a practically invisible feeding system that sends water to tiny nozzles. The nozzles are embedded in plant pots and hanging baskets’ soil bases, right next to the roots they are feeding. When the tap is turned on, each nozzle dispenses measured drips of water at regular intervals. Drip irrigation means a gardener can water his or her pot plants and hanging baskets only when they need it and using only the amount of water each plant requires. Nothing is wasted, nothing gets over- or under-watered and, because the drip irrigation system is already in place, trips to fill watering cans or get hosepipes out are a thing of the past. Drip irrigation is as simple as turning on a tap. And with its’ new 21st century prices, drip irrigation saves money as well as time and labour.
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