Running drip line to raised flower/garden bed

[Chris Milot]

I'm planning on building a retaining wall with flower bed against my backyard fence as well as a garden against the side wall. What would be the best way to get drip lines to these areas? Trying to figure out the best way to do this with future maintenance in mind. Is the most common way to just run this under the wall and come up on the inside of the wall? That may make replacing the line in the future difficult if it ever ends up leaking. Anyone have any experience with running drip lines to raised areas like these?

Thanks!

 

[HudsonDIY]

If you have an irrigation system its pretty simple to add an extension off one of the zones to the raised bed. You would run the PVC supply line under the bed and terminate in the bed. The you could run the drip off the line which would be tied into your existing irrigation system and automatically run the drip system on the irrigation system schedule. I've done this in many locations on my property and its virtually maintenance free. The drip system uses so little water I've seen no affect on the existing zones.

 

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[Chris Milot]

Thank you for your reply! So the raised bed I have some poly tubing nearby for a tree that I can tap into. So for that it's best to run it under the retaining wall blocks and then come up at one end? Then run the rest of it near the top of the raised bed? It will be several feet high.

The garden I'm planning on making will also be raised a few feet with retaining wall blocks. I plan on adding another irrigation valve for the garden so I can control the watering of that separately. Should I run like 1" PVC from this valve until I get to the garden bed adn then transition to poly tubing?I'm assuming I'll need a flow reducer. Or should I just run poly from the valve to the garden bed, come up from inside the garden and run poly down the length of it and just tap the individual drip lines into that poly?

Thanks for the help! Just want to get this right the first time so I don't have to redo it

 

[HudsonDIY]

I think a lot of it depends on how big the bed is. Most of my irrigation system is 1/2" PVC which is 6 zones on 1/3 of an acre and it handles it with no problems. I think 1" might be overkill but again that depends on the area you're irrigating. Just my personal preference but I prefer you use PVC in as much of the run as I can I can just for durability. There's a lot of irrigation calculators online that can help you determine the right size. If it were me I think I would run PVC under the raised bed, perhaps one on each end if its a big bed, and then feed off the PVC. That way your poly runs are short. I'm always keeping maintenance in mind and less is always better. I see you are in southern Arizona so I assume freezing isn't an issue.

There are some connectors designed specifically to connect poly tubing to an existing PVC irrigation system. They seem to handle the reduction in flow by themselves.

Hopefully I was somewhat helpful and as always I want to state I'm not a pro just a lazy homeowner that tries to automate as much as possible.

 

[Chris Milot]

Thank you HudsonDIY! It's just a small garden bed like 5 x 8 and the flower bed against the back wall will be like 3 x 30. This gives me a good starting point and think i'll use 1/2" for the garden bed which should definitely be sufficient. There is already poly where the flower bed will be so I'll just rip that up and run some new one inside that. Thanks for the help!

 

[aminumar]

I tackled a similar setup last summer. I ran my drip lines under the wall and popped them up inside. It works well, but you're spot on about future maintenance. I added shut-off valves for each bed, so if there's an issue, I can isolate it without disrupting the system. Here's a guide on how to fix a raised metal garden, just in case. Good luck with your project!