Drip Watering System For Potted Plants – Home / Gardening techniques / Container gardening / How to install a drip irrigation system for potted plants yourself
An automatic watering system for outdoor plants makes life easier and saves you a lot of time. It’s also very easy to install your own and doesn’t take much time (totally worth every second!). Follow these simple step-by-step instructions to install a DIY drip irrigation system for potted plants.
Drip Watering System For Potted Plants
We have an area behind the house that gets full sun that I’ve always thought would be perfect for growing, but it’s under the eaves of the house so it doesn’t get much rain.
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My husband put several pots of peppers in there last year, but hand watering all those pots became a lot of work in the heat of summer. Last year we had a drought so we had to water these pots by hand several times a day. It’s not fun!
My husband told me he wanted to line the area with pepper pots this year, so we decided to add a drip irrigation system to make it easier to water our potted plants.
It turns out that setting up your own drip system for potted plants is just as easy as adding overhead sprinklers to our greenhouse.
Plus we had some poly tubing left over from that project so we could use it for this project – bonus!
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Think of a drip irrigation system as an automatic watering system for pots and containers. It hooks right into your garden hose or faucet, so when it’s turned on, all your pots are watered at the same time.
You can turn the water on manually or set it on an automatic timer to create a self-watering system for potted plants (trust me, a timer is totally worth it and not very expensive to buy!).
Installing a drip irrigation system for potted plants has many benefits for you and your plants. The main benefit is convenience, and let me tell you, an automatic drip irrigation system makes container gardening MUCH easier!
Self-watering pots not only make your life easier, they’re also better for your plants and ensure they get just the right amount of moisture.
Setting Up Your Own Drip Irrigation System
Consistent watering not only keeps your potted plants happy and healthy, but also helps prevent problems like blossom rot.
Healthy plants have fewer pest and disease problems and produce TONS of tastier food for us? What’s not to love?
Depending on how many potted plants you have, a drip irrigation kit may be all you need to install the entire system.
You can buy a smaller kit if you have 8 pots or less, or you can get a larger kit like this one that will automatically water up to 20 pots.
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Drip irrigation kits are a great way to start and will include full instructions for setting everything up. Some sets are even equipped with a timer.
However, keep in mind that even if you start with a drip irrigation kit, you may need to purchase a few additional parts (for example, most do not come with a pressure regulator). So be sure to read the details of what’s included in the kit.
Of course, you can also design your own drip irrigation system, which is what we did for our setup since we already had the main pipe and a few other parts to get us started.
Step 1: Connect the connectors to the faucet, hose or spigot – It’s easier to hang everything up if you first connect the connectors to the hose or spigot. So for this step, take the backflow preventer, pressure regulator, and faucet hose fitting.
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Start by attaching the backflow preventer to the hose or outer spigot (it simply screws on). Next you connect the pressure regulator and finally the tap fitting (this also screws in – no tools required!).
You basically end up chaining garden hose attachments together in this exact order (backflow preventer, pressure regulator, faucet fitting).
Step 2: Connect the 1/2″ poly hose to the hose fitting – Take one end of your 1/2” poly main hose and push it into the open end of the faucet hose fitting. Once pushed, pull the sleeve on the hose fitting and tighten to secure the hose.
You may want to kink the tubing and turn on the water to make sure there are no leaks at this point, otherwise you can wait and test everything later in step 7.
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Step 3: Figure Out Your Drip Irrigation System Design – The next step in installing a drip system is to determine how far apart the drip heads will be so you know exactly where to install the micro tubing.
We simply placed the pots where we wanted them and then laid the polypropylene hose in front of them (Tip: let the hose sit in the sun for a while to warm it up, it’s easier to lay it flat when it’s warm).
We then measured where each pot was located and marked the poly tubing where we needed to add drip tubing lines for each of the drippers.
After measuring all of this, we cut the tubing at the very end using our PVC cutting tool (you could use a PVC pipe saw to cut the tubing) and closed the tubing with an end cap.
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Step 4: Determine How Long the Drip Lines Will Be – Next, we measured how long each piece of micro tubing needed to be for the drip lines.
This is simply the length from where you marked on the main hose to where the drip head will be inside the pot.
We added a few extra inches to the length of each piece of micro tubing so it would be loose enough to allow us to move the pots around a bit if we wanted to (which we did and it works really well).
Step 5: Install Micro Tubing – It’s easy to add drip lines and micro spray heads.
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When installing the drip line, simply punch a hole in the main row poly tubing (using a drip irrigation punch) where you want to add the drip lines (these are the locations you marked on the tubing in step 3).
Don’t panic if you make a hole in the wrong place. I know making a mistake isn’t ideal, but if you end up making a hole in the wrong place…well, that’s why they make stupid plugs! It’s good to have them on hand just in case.
Then you first connect the drip tube connector to the main tube and then connect the micro tube drip tube to the other end of the connector.
Step 6: Installing Irrigation Drippers – Installing drip heads is also very easy. You basically just plug them into the open end of the micro tubing and then put them in the container.
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Our drip microheads come with tips that hold them in place so they stay where we put them.
We centered the microheads in each of our pots, just to one side of the base of the plants. Be careful not to damage any tender roots or seedlings when pushing the watering tips into the soil.
Step 7: Test Your Irrigation Setup – Before burying the main line, test everything to make sure everything is working without leaks. You definitely don’t want to miss anything.
It is also a good idea to adjust the drip heads at this point. The tops of the heads rotate so you can control the amount of water coming out.
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We’ve tweaked each one to make sure they don’t spray outside of the pots and that they all work properly.
Step 8: Secure the Poly Tubing – Once everything was installed and tested, we secured the main line hose into the ground using 1/2″ drip irrigation tubing.
The pins snap onto the mainline tube, making it easy to attach. Then we simply buried the hose in the mulch to give it a cleaner look.
Note that you can install more hoses behind the planters than in front of them, as we have done here. This way the micro tubing will run up the back of the pots and not be as visible.
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But it will work either way. (We just installed our front to make it easier for you to take pictures)
Step 9: Set a Timer to Auto-Water – Finally, we’ll set the hose timer to run on a schedule so we never have to worry about watering those pots again (which is especially nice when we’re on vacation!).
Once your automatic watering system is up and running, I recommend checking your pots regularly to make sure they are getting the right amount of water. You can then adjust the timer accordingly to achieve this.
We turn off the drip irrigation timer in case of heavy rain and increase the length, or
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