Converting Sprinklers to Drip in a Flower Bed! 💦🌿 // Garden Answer

All right guys, I've got all the stuff here. Let me show you what we're working on today So we've got five sprinklers on risers in this flower bed that we're going to be capping off today and then running drip The reason why these don't work one. I don't really like how they look they kind of stick up like a sore thumb I mean, they're just always here like this Um, the second reason is we've got a lot of tall perennials In this flower bed that block the water from reaching other areas of the bed So the last couple of summers i've been having to drag a hose out and spot watering stuff And I really don't want to have to do that this year and the third reason is we have terribly hard water So we try to not to do any overhead watering if at all possible because what we end up with is a bunch of white Spots all over our green foliage. I mean you can see look how white this black sprinkler is That's hard water and that's what happens to our plant foliage if we don't water from underneath So anyway, I just wanted to show you guys the process of how to do that Maybe you have something like this going on in your garden that you want to fix So i've got a bunch of supplies here. I've got shovels buckets to put our soil in Um, i've also got this is what we picked up at home depot this morning This is the type of drip tubing I like to use This is a hundred foot roll and it's got holes soaker holes every 18 inches I find that running them about this far apart from each other in beds Really does a good job soaking now. That's really good for beds that have really thick planting So like there's just stuff planted everywhere in this bed, and it would be very inefficient to run individual drippers to each thing however, like we have a line of our dividers that we planted last year where we ran of just a A black tubing that didn't have soaker holes and then we ran individual drips that way we weren't wasting water So it just depends on what kind of situation you have And then in here, I just got a bunch of different kinds of connectors. So there's t's These are elbows. I don't know how well you guys can see these through the bags And then these are just straight right there just depending on what we need And then these are what we cap the end of the tubing off with so that the water doesn't flow out So I think we're just gonna get started and start digging He's gonna start digging are you digging buddy? All right guys, so here's the deal it looks like this sprinkler is screwed on to a 90 degree angle down here Connector that's connected to some flex pipe and I have no idea how far this flex pipe goes to where it actually hooks Into a regular pipe. So this isn't the most ideal fix But what i'm going to do is just unscrew the sprinkler and then just cap it with this half inch cap here um, of course if you can go to the Source to the actual pipe and cap it there. It's better But we'll just keep in mind that we know where this is in the future I'm, just going to bury this up and we'll move on to the next one Okay, so this one is a little bit different you can see I got to the main water pipe So i'm just going to unscrew the sprinkler So to cap this one i'm just going to have to use a little bit of a different cap So the cap I used on the last one had threads on the inside. This one has threads on the outside So it's just pretty simple just thread it in I probably put my glove on so I can get it really tight All right, so i'm just going to fill it back in we got all of the sprinklers capped And so this is the area we're going to be running drip from the boxes right here on my right All the way over to the edge of the bed over there in the shade We're actually going to be tapping into some existing drip line Which I don't know if you can see the white proven winners can back there But that's where we're going to start. So let me take you over there So this is the area where there's already existing drip tubing and this is where i'm going to be tapping in for my new area So if we get in close i'll show you how I do it All right. So the first step is to take my pruners and cut the existing tubing Then i'm going to take my t connector and push it into both sides Okay, there we go. Then attach one end of your new tubing And then you just run the tubing where you need to go and I use landscape staples to help tack down The tubing ever so often All right, we got all the drip tubing in place and we actually have it spaced fairly close to each other And this is how we have to water in high desert It's just the way it is here because it is so hot and we don't get hardly any rain Like maybe one or two storms every single summer And very little humidity so we have to irrigate all the time to keep things green and alive And then of course I spaced them fairly close because I have a ton of perennials in this bed Um, so instead of running individual emitters, like I said, we need to run the tubing a little closer to each other So we got we have better coverage and also watering from below instead of watering overhead with a sprinkler sprinkler will avoid the hard water issue that we have And i'm jealous of those of you who get a lot of rain And that can water things with a big sprinkler and just have everything look really nice and lush That's just not the name of the game here So this is pre-mulch. This is not how it's going to look in the end Of course all of the drip tubing will be hidden and that's why we wanted to do it one Before all of the plants grow up any more than they already have, you know, we have a lot of tulips up already that I was trying to dodge, um, and then Also, I like to put a fresh layer of mulch Usually I like to do once a year if I can We're gonna probably try to hit a lot of our flower beds this year kind of call it a mulch year Um so that everything gets a nice layer and it looks really nice but of course you won't see it for very long because Um soon like in maybe a month month and a half this thing will be Super full and it's actually always a problem in the spring I always feel like I don't have a lot of plants so I drag a whole bunch of stuff home And I forget how full it actually gets So the last thing I want to cover is for those of you who don't have an existing drip system to hook into like I was Able to today which makes it very easy if you have drip nearby There's actually an adapter that you can buy that looks really similar to this. This isn't one This is actually an end cap, but it looks similar You can attach one end to your faucet and then the drip tubing comes out this other end You can run it in your garden. You can even Attach this to a timer so that you don't have to turn on your hose ever It's very handy. I did that in our old garden and it worked really really well for me. So that's it you guys I hope this video wasn't super boring. I know irrigation isn't like the most thrilling subject, but if um, nothing else I hope it maybe helped some of you guys out that are dealing with Needing to put in drip system in your bed so that you can kind of see how we do it here Of course, you know might need to adapt it for your area Um, but yeah, thank you guys so much for watching and we'll see you in the next video. Bye