Transcription
So we're back in the garage, just to get a little run-through of some of the materials that you're going to need before we go outside and make the drip irrigation happen. To convert it from a hose, you're going to want one of these pressure regulators. All right, and then from here, we're going to go into a hose to half-inch press-fit adapter. And then this is the, the line that's currently running through the trench. It's going to run up to a T where I'm splitting it to go left to my emerald green arborvitaes. And then at the end of that hose, we're going to cap it off. And then it's going to go to the right, down a couple hundred feet, uh, to my green giant arborvitaes. I'm gonna make it turn, uh, so I got an elbow there, and then another end cap. Uh, these are just two end caps that I bought at different stores. And then we have some clips to go along the way, of course. Before we go from our hose into our pressure adapter, I have one of these Orbit digital hose timers. So we're going to put this on a schedule. And then along the half-inch drip tube, we have some press-in one-gallon-per-hour drip emitters. Uh, we're going to put two of these on each tree. We're going to use our installation tool to press those in. And we have some quarter-inch drip line that will go from the drip emitter to the tree. All right, so let's head back out and get to working on putting all this stuff together.
For my setup, I didn't want to have to leave the hose extended from the house to water the trees, so I decided to start by digging a trench to be able to bury the water line. If you're planning on permanently burying your irrigation, you may want to dig down 12 inches so you don't accidentally puncture a water line in the future. Once the trench was dug, I unrolled a long section of half-inch irrigation tube and laid it down in the trench. I then used a PVC pipe cutter to cut the tube a little longer than needed before burying it with the pieces of sod I had just dug out. For my emerald greens, I ran a main trunk of half-inch tube down the center of my double row. I made sure to leave a little extra on both ends and use the half-inch stakes to hold down the tube and straighten it out. I then cut the tubes to length in order to connect them together with a T. Make sure that you account for the inch or so of tubing that presses into the fitting. The connection will be tight, but these press fittings are pretty easy to work with. To get water to my green giants, I ran a new section of tube down the side of my yard and used a few tube sticks to keep it in place along my neighbor's fence line. I then connected it back to the other side of the T coming from the house. I used a half-inch elbow to make the turn down the center of my row of green giants. Then at the end of the run, I used a press-fit end cap to close off the tube. I also went back and closed off the end of the run by my emerald greens with another end cap.
For each tree, I decided to run three quarter-inch tubes with a one-gallon-per-hour emitter for each tube. To do this, insert the emitter into your installation tool and press it into the main half-inch line. Then connect your drip tube to the emitter and cut it to length. I found that cutting small pieces of wire and bending them to form stakes worked really well at keeping the tubes in place. I also made sure to dig out a small berm where the tube ended to keep the water from running away from the trees. With all the tubes in place, the last thing I needed to do is connect the half-inch tube to the hose timer. Just press on the tube to hose adapter and then attach the hose adapter to the pressure regulator. While I'm doing this, if you've learned something from this video, feel free to hit that like button and don't forget to subscribe to see how these trees are doing in the future.
Because I wanted to still be able to use the hose at this location, I decided to attach the hose timer to a splitter and then connect the drip tube to the timer with a short lead hose. This also keeps me from worrying about my schedule resetting if I were to manually run the timer and stop it with the off function. Arborvitaes need deep watering at about 10 gallons per week. I wanted to run the timer only once a week so that it would give the roots a chance to breathe between waterings. Since I have three twos per tree, which gives me a total of three gallons of water per hour when the system is on, I set the timer to run for 200 minutes, which should give me a total of 10 gallons per tree. While setting a timer is great, everyone's soil will drain differently, which is why I also recommend picking up a soil moisture meter like this one that I'll link below. After you water your trees, the meter will likely read wet, then over the next few days, it will slowly make its way down to dry. For the first week or so, you may consider testing the soil around the root ball and adjusting your schedule so that the trees get more water anytime the meter says they're dry.
With the water all set, I finished my arborvitaes by adding a two to three-inch layer of mulch, which is about three bags per tree. Just make sure that when you're spreading out the mulch, you keep it a few inches away from the base. Not only will it look nice, it'll help keep moisture in the soil, which is very beneficial to the trees. Well, that'll do it for this project. Good luck with your trees, and I hope to see you all again on the next one.