Container Gardening with Drip Irrigation

Container and potted plants can benefit from drip irrigation year-round.
Credit: Robert Nunnally
 from Flickr via Creative Commons License

If you enjoy gardening with containers around your deck, patio or yard, drip irrigation will prove to be a perfect addition to your portable garden. You may already know some of the advantages container gardening offers, including but not limited to:

    1. Portability = containers can be moved to the best spots

    2. Container gardens are great for beginners 

    3. Less bending over = less back pain
    4. Vegetables can be grown next to the kitchen

By combining these benefits with drip irrigation's root targeting technology you'll save time and worry about hand watering your plants, and will have more time to enjoy your decorative and delicious plants looking beautiful month after month. 

In the following post we'll explain how to setup your container onto a drip system, and will offer our recommendations for which emitter products work best and why.

Clay, Loam, or Sandy Soil: What Drip Should I Use?

T-Tape works great in heavy clay soil.

Varying soil types need specific drip emitters or sprayers to put out water at precise rates for proper watering patterns. In order to help our fellow drip irrigation enthusiasts, and those interested to learn more about drip irrigation techniques, we've gone ahead and listed our recommendations for the best drip emitters, sprayers, and tubing to use for your irrigation needs based on soil types.

Heavy Clay Soil

Clay soil absorbs water slowly and spreads the water laterally, therefore we recommend low flow emitters to give the water time to spread out. For individual plants use emitters with a low ½ gallon per hour rating such as the the Woodpecker PC (DNPC12) emitter, the Woodpecker JR (DNJR12) emitter, or the Pinch Drip Emitter (DPCH12). For row crops, low flow T-Tape, Aqua-Traxx, or Emitter Tubing (DET125) works well.