Drip Irrigation for Dummies

drip irrigation drippers

The staffers at world HQ of the Antisocial Network have recently been working in the "community garden" in preparation for spring planting. The biggest task is refurbishing the drip irrigation system for the raised garden beds, so it was with some interest that the gardeners among us read through the EzineArticles.com post by returning DotD Shalini Madhav (sometimes known as "dbslinks"). We were more than a little interested to see what the Bangladeshi freelancer had to say on the topic of, "Steps To Install A Drip Irrigation System." We weren't disappointed – if by "disappointed" you mean, "Didn't find anything that contributed to the stupidification of the internet."

Madhav took off at a run, exhorting her readers to,

"[R]reduce the consumption of water without making a negative impact on your garden... [because] drip irrigation delivers water slowly and steadily to the base of plants."

Of course, our gardeners think you should "deliver water" to the roots, not the "base," and are also concerned about doing so "steadily" instead of as needed. But what do they know? Shalini's the expert, after all. Here are some of her other thoughts on the topic:

"A drip irrigation system is an ideal choice if you want to water your large shrubs, trees, flowerbeds, roses, vegetables and other plants. The reason is that these plants don't need lots of water."

We think she's confusing vegetables with succulents and cacti, but we aren't certain. Truth be told, the amount of water a plant needs is a function of a lot of variables, non of which Madhav mentions. Then there's this claim:

"This system is invisible. Moreover, it reduces the growth of weed and the evaporation of water."

Well, the evaporation part is right. We doubt the claim about "weed," though, and are quite sure drip systems aren't "invisible." Finally, Shalini shares her "instructions":

• "You can use a sprinkler head, an outdoor faucet or a valve with automatic irrigation in order to connect to the source of water." – Huh? WTF is a "valve with automatic irrigation"?
• "...start distributing the water. This will involve laying out a tube network for carrying water to the desired areas. You can use ½ inch of tube [sic] for this purpose. For branch lines, you can use ¼ inch pipes." – That's a strange way to put it (except for the crap about "pipes" and "tubes"), but OK.

And that's it. Madhav didn't mention the plethora of ways to actually get the water to the plants: drippers, microsprays, drip tubing, manifolds, and the like. To put it another way, if our Dumbass of the Day were writing instructions for building a house, her readers would be putting up the studs and rafters and then moving into the house.

Maybe someone who had actually put together a drip system should have written this post. Feh.

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