Drip vs. Overhead Watering – Why World Record Gardener Won’t Use Overhead for Most Garden Crops

Drip system vs. overhead watering – which is best, and why? Dad explains his garden watering setup and best practices. There’s a lot of information in this video I think you might find helpful! Drip system tips. Overhead watering tips.

Here’s an Amazon link to the drip tape we’d recommend;
P1 Drip Tape 15 mil. 8″ emitter spacing USA made – https://amzn.to/44fZzHD

Great soil health tips from Dan! Make the your soil the best dirt it can be by focusing on feeding the soil microbial biology, instead of feeding your plants. The reason this works best is because the soil microbes themselves are what actually feeds your plant’s root system through mycorrhizal symbiosis!

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Happy to see all of you here! We’re excited with the launch of our new channel and hope to help you with all things organic gardening, homesteading and woodworking! I’m Luke and I have been wanting to make some videos to help others be successful gardeners, homesteaders and woodworkers. Together with my wife, our family, and my father and his, we hope our videos are a blessing to you as you learn how we put food on our table, take care of our homesteads and do some woodworking projects together!

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[Music] hello everyone welcome back to our Channel today we’re going to go over a few drip system details dad will tell you why he likes to use drip systems and some details some tips and tricks I hope you enjoy it here we go all right so we use drip tape uh what I use is 15 mm a 15 mil thick uh drip tape and the emitters are uh 8 in on Center and uh buy it in oh I think it’s like a 4,000 ft roll is what I get it in and so it’s and it’s really cheap and so here we got just a manifold here and that feeds this is where the water comes in right here and this hits a pressure regulator down the 10 psi what’s that other thing and then this is the filter system and you can just unscrew that and clean the filter and screw SC back on so then it goes down here water here how many psi uh regulator did you say 10 psi okay yeah and then I’ve got a manifold that runs all the way across this end of the garden here and uh comes down here to the main pathway here we’ve got the main line coming through here and then there’s a a man a manifold running this way and then another one running on this side side of the the main path by manifold you mean this is a 10 psi leg yeah this is a 10 psi leg it’s a bigger size it’s it’s 3/4 in all and it’s just like regular just polypipe it’s nothing special okay just regular polypipe and then you just punch in the uh these little valves here um kind uncover here this little valve here you just these kind of get kind of stiff like that and turn it on turn it off why do you want to valve uh that way you just control uh your water if you’re trying to germinate you want to give maybe a little more water or whatever uh you can just control it or if you want you know some crops take more water than others um so like these this is the bean section here and these are spaced 2 feet apart that’s really tight I wouldn’t go any closer than that for beans yeah because we plant beans on either side of this drip tape and uh so you got to have room to kind of get in between there and pick the bush beans and over on this side this is a corn and that’s the same it’s 2 feet on Center the the drip lines and the corners plant on either side of each one of those tapes so it’s like in a zigzag alternating yeah you plant one like if you plant a seed here and another one here then you put the one over here so it’s kind of a triangle here M gives the roots the the largest area to work and so you just you know 9 to 10 inches apart this way and then just about a you know five six Ines on either side of the B uh uh drip tape for corn mhm and uh then we come down here and there’s uh potatoes in here and these are 30 in apart these drip lines here these are 30 in apart and they all have their valves just like the others but I don’t use them uh too much I don’t depend on these for potatoes for the watering I use the overhead for the for the potatoes like this here yeah the the drips just don’t uh get the water spread far enough um for the potatoes and then all the standard beds that are 4T wide uh these are about about 12 inches apart these these drip lines and uh seems to work good for a 4ft bed um gives it room to plant on either side of each drip line and like all of them I have valves on everything uh just much easier to cuss them with tail your water into each crop some things take more water than others so uh and so that uh manifold runs all the way down here and all these little valves are just punched into it you have a little little punch that makes a little clean hole in this 3/4 in line right here and uh then you just stick that in the hole and then the uh I guess probably should get one of those Valves and just put uh how to put the tape together sure we can demonstrate that um so let’s see well here this this do one right right here this one’s may be easy enough to do so here’s a little nut that you turn to pull these things off and that’s how you comes off that’s just a Barb fitting there yeah it’s kind of a Barb fitting so you just slide that on on there and you kind of wiggle it back and forth put it all the way in there and then you just turn this collar collar and that locks it on that barb fitting and that’s it and that’s how you attach the drip tape to the valve I just noticed that you have this thing right here what is that here that staple that St right here yeah can you pull that out what is it it’s just a landscape uh staple okay and why do you use this and that just keeps the drip tapes from blowing all around in the wind and the during the year um so they’re I stape them down maybe every 4 feet uh along the line yeah you don’t really want to you want a drip system not a trip system yeah a garden drip system it can be really messy if you don’t have staple down cuz the wind comes along and just blows them all everywhere and it just looks like a spaghetti Factory and Staples are cheap too yeah that’s a very good idea oh Dad one other question um just so people know you put the emitters on the top side correct oh yeah correct yeah the emitters you see little tiny hole little pink colored that’s the emitter and you always leave that on the top side if you had it on the bottom then if there’s any kind of siment in the line it would tend to plug up the hole mineral buildup or dirt or anything in yeah so you always leave that on top leave the drip hole on the top y are these what spacing are the emitters on this specific these are all 8 in spacing on everything that I use and why do you like it 8 in spacing well I would go 6 in if I could but it’s hard to find so I just go with the closest that I can get so 10 psi that’s half in drip I think it’s called 5/8 5/8 drip yeah 8 in spacing yeah 15 mil thickness 15 mil thickness the thinner stuff you don’t like because it it’s just didn’t last it’s just really flimsy you have to use more Staples and I it’s it doesn’t hold up good and if a gopher takes one little tiny bite out of it it’s done it’s yeah can you explain and show how you terminate the ends of a a drip run oh yeah that’s a good let me see maybe down over here we can uh so each end of the drip tape we’ve got we fold these things over so like this is just the end of the tape and you’re just putting these things in the garden for the first time you just fold it like that like a z yeah you need to have at least two points that are bent like here’s one Bend and here’s other Bend you need two points otherwise a leak too much and you just kind of pinch them together you cup it into a u-shape kind of yeah and just kind of pinch it together what’s the other piece you’re putting on this is another piece of the drip tube the same stuff same stuff okay yeah they make fancy little in in termination uh fittings you can buy but you know they cost a lot and just use this it doesn’t cost anything and keep it simple and cheap yeah so and this is really cold and hard to do right now but when it’s hot it’s a lot easier so you just slide it on like like that put it back down you terminate the end and put your put the stap in there you’re good to go very easy pretty simple and very cheap another reason why I like to use drip tape is like overheads every time the water drop it hits the ground it just packs the dirt and it compacts your soil so with the drip line just seeping and going in really slow and uh keeps your soil more aerated you don’t have it packed so hard with overhead sprinkling and another benefit obviously is weeds right weed yeah weed control yeah you’re not watering everything you’re just watering right where the roots of the plant are oh this is not weeds this is lettuce yeah that’s all lettu volunteer lettuce that’s for uh spring lettuce yeah and and dad leaves that in there to come up in the spring so it’s there would be a lot more in the spring coming up and uh so yeah it works really good and uh it’s well worth the money and time to put it in so is there anything else you can think of that I just about ran into this windmill back here so I wouldn’t be thinking if I hit that I’d be thinking about something else real quick we about sizing the gpms on the regulator is there different gallons per minute Regulators that you buy there’s only two different sizes that I know of in that in that type of a pressure regulator and it’s either oh I can’t remember what the the gallonage is on them but there’s a lower flow and then there’s a higher one and I use the higher one for cuz I can water this whole garden at once with that one little tiny regulator okay um so if you have a smaller Garden you could certainly get by with the uh the smaller regulator isn’t there higher PSI Regulators too you don’t want to make a mistake and buy wrong one this drip tape is made for 10 psi and so you don’t want to get anything higher than that uh they have them all the way up to you know whatever 40 50 psi um but just get the 10 psi and that’s good how do you calculate how long to water uh when you’re using the drip system oh that’s you can’t there’s no rule for that because depend on how you know what your temperatures are your humidity well how do you tell when you’re when it shut it off you have you have it on a timer or how do you deal no I just uh let it run for a while you can you kind of get a a feel for you know if it takes uh it might take a couple hours it might take one hour um but just put your finger in the ground in the dirt and see how wet it is and you can kind of tell you know okay if it needs more if it needs less uh there’s no set time that they’ll water it it’s cuz here we get really really hot temperatures in the summertime triple digit and so we have to water more often and that’s one of the reasons you have those valves at the at the beginning of each line right you regulate the flow a little bit with those or shut off in case you don’t have any crop there yeah like if like in the springtime you’re going to be planting lettuce maybe first or cilantro or something like that so you don’t want to water the whole garden you want to just water the row of lettuce and the row of you know cantro and just whatever you’re putting in and you don’t use those to regulate flow then no don’t use them to regulate and then in the fall when you’re pulling the stuff out of the garden shutting the garden down then you still got a few rows of something in there you can keep those running and shut all the rest off so just helps conserve water yeah so I hope all of you enjoyed that walk through the drip system all the tips the tricks the information that Dad gave as far as what’s the best practice and how he does things hope you found it useful if you have any comments to add Put it Down Below in the comment section and please give us a thumbs up please subscribe and [Music] remember