That line from the 1967 classic "The Graduate" seems to have become one of the most memorable in cinematic history for literary reasons that are too artsy fartsy for me to understand or care about. Nonetheless, I recently became truly appreciative of plastics -- and polyethelene ("PE") specifically -- when setting up my DIY garden irrigation system over the summer.
Environmentalists who rail against plastic are barking up the wrong tree. (See what I did there?) Without plastics, the plants in my garden literally would not survive.
When I had my new landscaping installed at my house, I intended to install my own sprinkler system. I figured I could do it more cost-effectively and also more precisely than a professionally installed system. With floor-to-ceiling windows on most of the first floor and plants planted next to and all along those windows, what I really wanted was to avoid having the sprinklers hit the windows and creating constant water stains on the glass.
I had originally planned on burying some PEX tubing and hooking them up to sprinklers. However, my landscaper introduced me to a much better and more efficient and precise method known as "drip irrigation."
A drip irrigation system consists of large-diameter PE "main line" tubes (I used 1/2" dia.) and smaller-diameter PE tubes (typically 1/4" dia.) that feed from the main tubes to direct water to plants. "Drip line" tubes have emitters built into them that allow you to direct controlled drips at individual plants. The PE material is designed to withstand extreme temperatures and can be left outside and in the ground year-round.
Drip irrigation systems have the following advantages:
(1) They are more efficient in that you can bury the drip lines under the mulch and into the soil. This allows water to be injected directly into the ground. As compared with a traditional sprinkler system that relies on sprayed water seeping into the soil, when buried, drip lines don't result in water evaporating before it even seeps into the ground.
(2) Related to the first point, drip lines are much more precise. Unlike sprinklers, you're not indiscriminately spraying water over a large expanse of ground in areas where there may not be any plants. With a combination of blank tubes, emitter tubes, and connectors, you can direct water to individual plants without having to also water all of the ground in between the plants. Theoretically, this also should inhibit the growth of weeds between the plants.
(3) Drip irrigation systems are truly a DIY job. All you need are garden shears to cut the PE tubing, small garden tools to clear the mulch/soil for the tubing, landscape staples to secure the tubing, and a bit of time.
(4) Drip irrigation systems are much cheaper than a professionally installed in-ground irrigation system. I think I spent no more than $400 on all of the parts for my system, including for three lawn sprinklers (more on those below).
(5) Since drip irrigation systems are a DIY job, fixing them is also an easy DIY job if anything ever breaks.
I found this miniature rake in my $4 gardening set from Ikea to be extremely helpful in creating shallow trenches in the mulch/soil to place the drip tubing in.
I attached 3/4" female hose thread (FHT) compression fittings to my 1/2" main line tubes and hooked them up to a 4-zone Melnor Internet-connected hose bibb timer in the back of my house. The timer allows me to automate all of the watering needs around my property while maintaining separate watering schedules for my small patches of lawn and also maintaining sufficient water pressure for each zone:
I was unable to find any drip irrigation emitters suitable for watering my lawn without having to run a bunch of tubing across the lawn surface or cutting up the lawn to bury the tubing. So I resorted to setting up these compact Melnor oscillating spike sprinklers along the periphery of the lawn, which I connected to separate 1/2" PE tubes using the aforementioned 3/4" FHT compression fittings and 3/4" male hose thread (MHT) couplers:
At first, I located the sprinklers on the side of the property adjacent to the house. But they looked a little too conspicuous when I looked at the house from the street. So I relocated them to the side adjacent to the street and away from the house. That made them pretty much unnoticeable when viewing the house from the street. This is an example of how my architect has influenced how I look at these aesthetic details.
One challenge that my mom kept nagging me about was how I was going to get water to a quadrant of the property that was cut off by two driveways. My property is bisected longitudinally at the front by a driveway and transversely on the left side by another driveway for a three-car garage that loads from the front and side.
Running tubing across these driveways was not an option. But I had thought of a solution a long time ago: digging a trench in the gravel alley alongside my side driveway. I fed two of the 1/2" PE tubes (one for a lawn sprinkler, and the other for the drip lines) through a 1-1/4" PVC conduit (another great plastic material) and buried it below the gravel. (The conduit's purpose is to protect the PE tubes from being crushed or punctured by the gravel when my cars run over it.)
Here's what my landscaping looks like with the irrigation system fully integrated:
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