I love drip irrigation! If are interested in using drip irrigation and would like to learn how to do so, please read The Beginners Guide to Using Drip Irrigation in Your Containers. If you would like to consider some different uses for drip irrigation, please keep reading…
Living Wreath. Have you ever seen a planter like this and thought it would be too difficult to use? I had purchased this wire living wreath form before I started using drip irrigation, but I quickly learned there was no easy way to keep it hydrated. It was awkward to water with a hose and plunging it into a tub of water frequently enough to keep the impatiens hydrated just wasn’t practical. The solution was a loop of tubing going around the inside of the wreath with 4 emitters attached. Another alternative would be using a small length of drilled soaker tubing inside the form.
Birdbath. Do the birds in your garden have to miss their baths during dry weather? We have many birds in our backyard and they just love this little birdbath. It only took a few seconds to fill when I was hand watering, but once I didn’t need to hand water anymore, I didn’t always feel like making a trip out to fill it on a hot day. I could have hung an emitter over the side, but that would have ruined the look of this birdbath. The solution was hiding a drip emitter over a branch in the dogwood tree overhead. It drips into the birdbath while my flower containers are receiving water from their drip emitters.
Difficult-to-Reach Containers. At one point, I had my many containers around the fence line of our property receiving water, but I still had to go out daily to water this urn in the middle of our garden. When we went on vacation, I would run a temporary line of tubing to it, but that was not a permanent solution because the tubing would show and/or accidentally be mowed. The solution was using a slim piece of PVC pipe with the drip tubing inside of it and burying it between the nearest flower bed and this urn. It took less than an hour to dig a shallow trench and bury a piece of PVC with the drip irrigation inside. In just a short time, the grass had filled in and the tubing was no longer visible. It’s been quite a few years and this solution is still going strong!
Container Water Garden. Have you ever made a container water garden? They are so easy and fun! For the first one that I made, I just hung an emitter inside it to keep the water garden full. You could not easily see the tubing behind the plants. I later learned to bring the tubing up through the planting hole before plugging it with plumber’s underwater epoxy putty.
Fairy Gardens. Do you have a fairy garden? I love these tiny little pots that go in a fairy garden, but how could I possibly keep something so small hydrated during our long, hot summers? I learned that I could insert the tip of an emitter into the bottom of each little container. This one is a little tricky because you have to bury the emitter with it facing directly up and then fiddle with it a little until it stands up straight. I think it’s well worth it! For more about creating your own fairy garden, see Magical Lights in the Fairy Garden.
Butterfly Puddlers. Did you know that butterflies benefit from the nutrition that they find in mud puddles? For more on that, read this. My latest project is hanging a drip emitter over some sandy, salted mud to make a butterfly mud puddler. The emitter could be hung in a tree or on a Shepard’s hook overhead. You could even just identify a hanging flower container that starts dripping pretty quickly when watered and move away some mulch underneath to make your butterfly mud puddler there. We will see if this works. It isn’t terribly attractive, is it? Hopefully the butterflies won’t mind!
I hope that you found a fun project to use in your garden! Happy Gardening!
Little Tudor on the Prairie 