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| Photo Credit: Frank Tansey |
| Drip irrigation makes it easy to get water directly to your plant. |
One of the common problems people have with container gardening is watering. The simple truth is container gardens need more water than in-ground gardens. If you think about it the reasons are pretty simple. Sometimes your containers are under an overhang and get little or no rain. Other times, the container is baked by the sun, which, in turn, dries out the soil more rapidly. The main reason for container garden watering problems is simple, containers have less volume of soil and hence plants have less of an ability to draw water to the root system.
There is a great solution to this problem—drip irrigation. Drip systems can put your container garden watering on autopilot. You may think that it is too difficult to install a drip irrigation solution, but for most people a drip irrigation solution is a simple one-time project.
Before we get started with this gardening solution, let's talk a bit more about drip irrigation. The original motivation for development of drip irrigation systems was to save water. It was true then and it is true now, drip systems do save water. In a drip system, water is transmitted directly to the plant and then dispensed on the plant at predetermined rates. For example, some drip emitters—the place where the water comes out—are rated at one gallon per hour, others might be rated at ½ gallon per hour and still other at rates higher or lower than these examples.
When you deliver water via a drip irrigation system, the soil and the plant can more efficiently absorb the water and less water is needed to keep the plant healthy. Think about it for a moment. If you dumped a gallon of water on one of your smaller containers, a lot of the water will be lost as it runs through the drain hole. With a properly sized drip system you may use the same gallon or perhaps even less water, but the plant and soil will retain and use more water.
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