Setting Up Irrigation In My Container Garden! Why I’m Replacing My Current System

I am trying out a new irrigation system to replace the old line running on my front deck garden. Let’s see how this one compares!

My overall thoughts are that I like using a 1/2″ tube for my main link. I might even try 3/4″ one day! I like the Carpathen emitters better than the Abakuku emitters although the Abakuku emitters do water at a larger diameter. If you have a favorite irrigation system, let me know in the comments!

Video showing how I set up the back deck irrigation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5U9GDXnS88

Link to everything I use for my irrigation: https://bit.ly/irrigation-cg

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so I have made a mistake and that mistake is not setting my irrigation up sooner so that’s what I’m going to do today it is in the mid 90s um I probably should have done this last month when it wasn’t this hot yet but basically I was waiting for everything to be planted up so I added some new Planters to my garden this year my raised beds from up gardening my bucket planter out back and when you’re setting up a drip or irrigation system especially in a container garden you need to run the drip to where the plants are so I wanted to make sure I had everything in place however this year I was also planting slower to make sure I put things where I wanted them and where I loved them so everything I feel like has kind of been a little bit delayed so now I need to go set up my irrigation so what I thought I would do warning this video might be a little bit long um because I do want to make sure I’m explaining the steps because irrigation I think is one of the questions I get asked about the most I think it’s one of those things that seems like it’s going to be much more difficult than it actually turns out to be and I’m so glad I have mine set up I actually I haven’t minded handw watering that’s what I’ve been doing so far in the garden and because I haven’t set up my irrigation yet but I know that the tasks I enjoy doing now are not the tasks I enjoy doing as we get further into the garden season and it keeps getting hotter and hotter so I have had a few different irrigation systems luckily for me for the most part things are already set up there’s one section of the garden that I’m removing the current irrigation because I don’t really like the system I don’t think it works the best for my needs in the garden and I am going to replace that section so most of it’s just like getting my timer set up turning things on testing repairing anything adding any new emitters if there’s new containers but that one section I will do with you so you can see how the irrigation system works so I have everything laid out in that room let’s go ahead over there and I will show you the different systems I’m working with this is what this table looks like 90% of the time if I ever share a photo of this room it means I’ve just cleaned and the table is empty except for the two ples in the middle but I’m a person who needs everything laid out before I start on a project or start getting myself organized so in the past let me actually come around and show you the very very first irrigation system I used in my garden which is what I’m going to take out today and replace is this waterwise drip irrigation system I got it because it was recommended by Garden answer it works great if you have a few pots and maybe like one or two plants in each pot but for my size Garden I’ve just realize it’s not the best and I’ll go into comparisons of the different systems that I’m using and why I’m choosing one over the other in just a second but this is the one I am taking out however because a lot of parts can be mixed and matched I am going to save this tubing so this is4 in tubing that also is the same size as other system so I’m keeping that just to have it back up the next irrigation system which I really like and it’s the majority of what’s well it’s everything else that’s in the garden but isn’t The Proven Winners so all of my back deck Garden hello um is set up on the carpan system half of the front deck is so this one I’ve been using since 2021 or 2022 I can’t remember now cuz time is meaningless but I really like this one there’s not very many pieces left because again I’ve been using it in my garden I’ve maybe had two or three kits total over the time that I’ve had it but I really like this one I also have because now that I’m comfortable enough with irrigation this is just like a random kit that you can use for irrigation that I use to then customize the kits that I already have um so this here it says yeah for the quarter inch irrigation tubing pieces for that these are the tubes that come with the carpan system this is the/ quar inch and then this one is I can’t remember if it’s okay just checked and this is 38 in so a little bit smaller than a half in and then over here is the new irrigation system that I literally just got and opened up so this one I mean the components are pretty much the same the setup is very similar no matter what system you get that’s why you can mix and match but this one this tube is a half inch in diameter so it is slightly larger than carpan I think the brand name was like abaku I think it was AB a ku ku I’ll link everything down below but I haven’t used this yet so I don’t know if I can say I recommend it I do recommend carpan though and then it also comes with quarter inch tubing and all the pieces so now let me talk a little bit about why I’m not using that and then why I am trying a new one um even though everything else in my garden is set up with carpan so the main reason that I am trying a different system other than carpan this time is solely because this main tubing is larger and I want to see what difference that makes in terms of the water pressure going from like point A to point B in my garden so this one again is 1/2 in this one from carpan is it says 38 in but it seems maybe even slightly smaller that they actually fit inside of each other so basically one end of your main drip line the tube that’s going to be larger diameter one end goes into your hose faucet and then this runs the entire length of wherever you plan a water and then I’ll show you how you set up and connect all of the emitters and all of that but basically the larger the tubing is the larger the diameter of the tubing the more water is going to be able to get from point A to point B all throughout your garden now I have noticed the front deck it’s not an issue but I will say both The Proven Winners and the carpan system I exceeded their recommendations in how many pots I should set them up on or the length that I should be using on one line so on the front deck I only have a small section set up with carpan water pressure is fine on the back deck I did one run along the whole back deck I will link that video down below because it goes into all the details and how I set that up in the back but by the time it gets to the last emitter on the line it’s nowhere near as strong as the first one in fact it kind of more slowly drips out which was fine to water my garden but now I’ve actually set up two zones up there as well just so I can hit everything that I need to so I am interested to see how this does now the other parts like the emitter is a little bit different so I’m hoping that I like it as much as the carpan but here’s the thing because it’s quarter inch tubing for both if I don’t like the emitters that the new kit comes with I can just use the same emitters as the old kit so that’s what I really like about this that everything kind of connects together so that I can mix and match which pieces I like the best and then let me show you the Proven Winners and the main reason I’m not using that anymore so this one only comes with the quarter inch tubing so that main line that’s supplying water to all of my beds was only A4 inch and again it it got to the end but even the emitters just aren’t the kind that I like um so I think it’s just time I was leaving that in the garden because it worked okay even though it wasn’t the best option and I am a kind of person who really doesn’t fix things until like it’s an absolute necessity but I figured now since most everything else is set up I just have to like connect it all and turn it on I am going to replace that so I’ve been trying to delay getting out there cuz I know it’s going to be warm but let’s go head outside and we will start setting up this new system out on the front deck and let me first talk about what is connected to my hose faucet so right on to the faucet I have the splitter I need a splitter because I need to have multiple things hooked up obviously there’s only one faucet so I would have to either choose between my hose or the timer for this faucet but the hose splitter makes it so I can set up multiple things now this hose splitter does have four different faucets but I’m only using two and on pretty much I’m pretty sure every splitter there’s an option to turn each one on and off so if I turn on the water right now these two are in the off position so no water is coming out there my hose is actually in the off position because with f ible hoses you’re not supposed to leave the water sitting in them so I turn it off after every time I use it and then your irrigation obviously you want that to be on because if this is off and my irrigation kicks on to run at 6:00 a.m. no water is going to be running through the system so it won’t actually water any of my plants so first is the splitter then here I have the timer now I I’ve used multiple timers over my time in the garden and this is the one now that I think is my favorite solely because I can control it from my phone so this is the orbit beehive I used it for the first time last year I got a second one to use this year so now I have one on my front deck here and one on my back deck other timers work perfectly fine I just couldn’t sync them to my phone I like being able to change if I want it to run or not from my phone keep track of when it ran and if it ran from my phone so that’s why I switch to this one um you do also have to get like a Wi-Fi setup thing I didn’t do that at first and couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t connect it to the internet all that will be be linked down below as well but the timer is what’s going to determine when the irrigation system runs now there are a few different options of the orbit beehive one came with just one faucet one comes with two which is what I have and the third option comes with four I feel like when I check different ones are sold out I would at least get two because even if you don’t need it right now you might at some point in the future and if I don’t schedule it to run so this is Zone one this is zone two if I don’t have a schedule for zone two to run nothing ever comes out and it’s fine um so even if you’re only thinking that you need one zone I would get at least the one with two or the one with four just so that you are safe then what I have are these little elbows the only reason I have this is so I can more easily connect the irrigation because my faucet is so low to the ground the more I add down it’s going to hit the deck I mean that’s like what definitely less than a foot from the faucet to the ground so those elbows just help to split this off into a different direction which makes it all easier to connect then I have a pressure regulator so when you’re running irrigation not you don’t want the same amount of pressure as you would be with just a hose because it’s going to be coming out of emitters it’s not like it’s doing jet sprays out of each of the emitters and basically if there’s too much pressure it can like knock the things off of your tubing so I have a pressure regulator on each um and then this is the carpan system that connects to it and then this came with the new system so this is what I’m going to connect that half inch tubing to so let’s go ahead and do that now so the first thing I need to do again this piece came with the kit all kits should come with this because this is how your irrigation system connects to the faucet so this piece comes off you stick it on here and you’re going to do the same process when you’re connecting the emitters as well so that piece goes on there then you want to go ahead and jam this on I know that’s not a very technical term but that’s how it works I have found out one plus side of doing this when it’s really hot outside is that the heat softens up the tube It also says you can soak it in boiling water if you want to but it is so hot outside that this should just go on and I find that if you just go back and forth with little wiggle it’s on so then to secure it into place that’s where this cap comes back down and you twist it into place make sure that it’s tight and there we go another reason to do this earlier in the season it is much easier to set this up when the plants aren’t already this tall um but we will still go ahead and I will try to squeeze through these plants and show you how to set it up this is what the looks like that I’m going to use in my garden it does come with two different emitters I think one is supposed to be an overhead spray I’m not using that one so this is the one I’m going to use in my garden this is going to connect to me grab the end of this so This emitter connect to the quarter inch tubing actually let’s just go ahead and shove that in there right now but right now the quarter inch tubing isn’t connected to anything so I have to connect the quarter inch to the half inch main drip line and you do that by using one of these now a difference between carpan and this system which I prefer carpan is that all of these have four connectors and water is going to run out of them if there’s not a tube connected to them whereas the carpan has some that have one some that have two it just gives you some more options so I need to go ahead and connect this to the main drip line and then I can connect the/ qu in drip line to this piece I’m going to bring up this tube and I need to make a cut in this tube and I don’t know if it’s just me but I was nervous the first time I did this but you have to in order to connect everything together so you just go ahead take the tube I find that pruners are the easiest to cut this with make a snip all right I switched up my pruners let’s see if these cut better oh those did okay maybe it’s when it’s my pruners that were the problem so now I have this cut obviously if I turn the water on now it would just pour out of this end of the tube so now I need to use this so just like the part that connects to the faucet these end caps twist off so I’m going to twist it off both sides then I’m taking this first part that I cut off and sticking the tube through the cap taking one end of this piece sticking it into the tube and then tightening the cap back on again this is going to be something you’re going to do multiple times to set up all of your drip so then I need to get this other end connected so pushing the tubing through that cap pushing the tube onto the piece and twisting it into place so now if I turn this on water would be squirting out of each of these so this is where I put the emitters on so I’m going to take this piece of quter inch tubing that has my emitter and going to try to figure out where I want it to go so I know the length so this one will probably be the farthest one at the edge of this bed you always want to cut more than you think you might need of the tubing because you can always trim it but you can’t add it back so I’m going to make a snip oh yeah these pruners are so much better I need to sharpen my other pruners note to Future Self then I take this piece back up stick in this quinch tubing and I find the quarter inch is a little bit harder to connect than the main one so I just wiggle that on into place the emitters can all be a little bit different I do think I like the carpan ones better than this one but basically there are little staks that go on to the end of the tube and then you stick this in the dirt so let’s go ahead and stick this down in there now I’m not exactly sure yet of the width of the spray actually maybe I’ll get this one part set up and test it and we’ll see how it does that way I know if I need you know three sprayers in here four six depending on the range of the spray will determine how many of the emitters I need in this bed so this is one of i’ say the smallest ranges these go pretty far but if I have that running I think four is more than enough to cover this whole bed so I actually have to head out for a garden planning meeting in a little bit so I did not time this accurately but I was trying to avoid the heat so I think the rest of the garden I’m going to set up and then I’ll show you and again it’s that exact same price process just over and over again but when I do it I’ll show you how I set up the individual pots cuz that’s going to be a little bit different but what I do like is that my raised beds are not going anywhere like they are in their permanent position whereas some of the more individual pots I might move year after year so I can set this up and it’ll pretty much be that same configuration going forward because I’m not making any changes to where the raised beds are all right I am back to finished setting up the irrigation and I did wait a couple days because I had to order a few more things so I had to order more of the/ in tubing because what the kit came with didn’t reach to the entire length that I needed it to run so I needed to order more of that um and then I also ordered some more carpan emitters because I really don’t like the ones that came with the new kit I’m trying there’s one good thing about them that I will show you once this is all set up so I am still using them but they’re just not my favorite so anyway let me show you what I have set up so far we’ll finish this up and then I’ll give you my full review that no one really asked for this is what we have so far so this bed is on drip this dollia this bed this dollia these two dollas this bed everything in this section so all of these grow bags big and small and this bed and then this is where the original tube if you can see where that coupler is connected did that is where the original line of tubing that came with the kit ended so I mean if that’s all that you need to cover one kit is fine and that’s the only piece I needed to add/ Quin tubing there’s plenty of that still left over emitters there’s plenty of those left over cuz I’m not using them all um but I’ve ran this half inch line now all the way around so this bed is set up already I have one emitter in this pot of sunflowers I need to finish up putting the emitters in here these pigeons have absolutely no fear about me anymore which I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing anyway so I’m going to put the emitters in there and then I have roll you over this Zenia pot that I also want to be set up I don’t think I’m going to set up the strawberries what else is not currently set up I’m going braspberries I actually might so there are still some things I might add but at least at this point all of that will be set up all my raised beds over here then I guess I mean the fruit trees are moving the fruit trees over there so I’m not setting those up on drip I have this pot and this pot over here set up on drip but all of these I don’t know maybe I will set them up maybe I won’t I’ll figure that out later but if not then that’s the only thing I’ll really have to hand water that and a few other random pots so I’m going to go through the same process I showed you just to show you again of how to add the coupler the piece that connect the/ in to the4 inch how to attach the tubing and then I’ll talk through what my thoughts are and if you are going to set up Irrigation in your container garden I’ll let you know what I would recommend first off we are cutting the tube where we want to put in the coupler I’m just going to cut it there with my sharpened pair of pruners I did sharpen my other ones then we Twist Off the caps on each end and this is the part that I do in the wrong order quite often I’ll want to immediately stick the tubing in here but before you do that you do have to put the cap pieces on so you want to slide the tube through there then stick this [Music] on and twist that into place and then you do the same thing on the other side and twist into place and then I will connect/ quinch tubing to each of these outlets and what I’ve been doing so far is three emitters in each of the raised beds that does seem to work I can always add more if I need to and I’m going to want run one of them down to the Zenia pot I feel like there are pollinators just trying to get in here and I’m disturbing them but I’m going to put this tube wiggle it onto the end it is still in the ’90s right now and I’ve left this tube sitting out which makes it much easier to stick on then I need to cut this at the length I want so this one I’m going to run to the furthest right in the bed so I’m just going to weave that through and that’s kind know where to cut it and for the emitters and the raised beds I am using the one that the new kit came with even though I don’t like them as much and the main reason I am still using them is because they have by far the largest diameter they have a much larger diameter than the carpan system but it’s just much harder to control but since this is a larger container that’s what’s been working well so the emitter goes on the end of the/ quinch tubeing I twisted it all the way to the right I’m going to twist it just slightly to the left so another issue is even though this does have a large diamer well one thing it’s hard to twist but even though it has a large diameter it’s like the smallest setting it’s still large so if you’re looking for a really large diameter drip line this would probably be good pulling up this main line just picking another one of those four well the remaining three to attach the/ quinch tube to this one I want to go in the center trying not to destroy the plants but I want this one to go in the center of this bed so just kind of figuring out where I want that clipping it here emitter on the end of the tube twisting it almost all the way to the right leaving it open just slightly putting the steak on and then putting this into the soil emitter on the end of the/ quarter inch wiggle that on again twisting it just slightly open stake on and then let’s put [Music] you maybe right here I need the wheel the pot over and I’m pretty sure this is the spot it’s going to be in but I’m probably going to cut this a little bit longer to give myself a little bit of wiggle room if I do want to shift it so let’s see maybe there that way if for some reason I want to move it like back further I can but again I mean you can shorten this at any time it’s much harder to lengthen it oh and this one I’m using the carpan emitter since it is just one pot and then twist that up and put you in the center next step is to turn it on make sure I have everything set up correctly and then adjust the emitters to the diameter that I want and that might give you a good idea of how large of a diameter those red emitters can go now I’m turning this on from my phone because I’m using the orbit beehive timer that’s the main reason I got it again the other timers I’ve used in the past work perfectly fine it’s just I couldn’t control them from my phone um so it is this line let’s do for 2 minutes and we will see what happens okay it’s kicked on let getting to the [Music] end okay okay I think I can open you up a little bit so right now I’m basically adjusting the diameter of these red ones and what I don’t like is that I have to take these out of the soil because it’s so hard to turn just sticking in the soil unlike the carpan system which I can turn very easily while the steak is still in the soil so this here is the carpan again that I can easily twist up and down um I’d say that’s maybe almost the full diameter that it can go just a little bit bit smaller and then these are kind of like in their mid in their mid-range right there so there are three in there that are currently running all right I am hiding in the shade now cuz it is still way too warm but we do have 70° temperatures on the way so next up um I don’t have like I said everything over there is set up on the drip which is a good portion of my deck um I have two zones so that zone I just showed you running is one the second Zone was set up last year on carpan with a center raised bed my herb garden and then the two pots over by my flower cart um if I’m going to add any more of my individual pots I’ll probably run it from not the Zone I showed you because there’s more setup on that zone so I try to keep it roughly even if I can um so knowing that there are fewer pots set up on the existing Zone from last year I would probably add more to that but we’ll see if I actually end up doing that or not so next I’m going to do probably tomorrow morning is I will turn on the drip manually and I will observe about how long it takes for the beds to be as saturated as I want the beds and the pots and then that’s going to determine how long I schedule it for so last year when I did just the drip irrigation The Proven Winners it was just one drip at a time that ran for like 20 minutes 20 25 minutes with these sprinklers I think the carpan I had set up last year that was like 2 to 3 minutes so I’m expecting to only have it 2 to 3 minutes but I’ll get an idea for that so I’ll run it manually then decide the length of time and then I usually like mine to go off somewhere between like 5:30 to 6 that way when I’m out here everything is already watered um someone actually asked me and I had never done this before so I decided to try they asked what happens if their irrigation is running and you want to use the hose at the same time and i’ never done that I did try it there’s not enough pressure like there was no water coming from the hose barely any so I like to have everything watered that when I come out here anything that needs to be handw watered I can go ahead and do that without waiting for the irrigation system to finish so with that let me go over now my thoughts which I’m glad I’ve had a few days to kind of sit and work with the system I like the half inch tubing so 100% completely sold half inch of that main line is great I don’t know if larger exists maybe for larger Gardens that need to be irrigated but have in has been a lot better than the/ quarter inch Mainline that was running from the drip system last year again it’s just slightly larger than the carpan system which is the whole reason I was looking for something with a half inch tubing the quarter inch drip that comes with both is the same I feel like everything has a quarter inch drip that connects to the emitters I do not like these I mean again I like the diameter that I can get them to if I want but I can just tell compared to carpan and I know you can’t tell because you can’t feel them but this just feels a lot lighter weight it doesn’t feel the same quality and when this is stuck into the ground the carpan irrigation which I was able to order just these separately so when this is stuck I can easily go in this turns so easy up and down so if something is wider than I want I can go in and twist it down twist it up to adjust the diameter I also like too that this sticks straight up so the water sprays in a circle around it which I think makes more sense for my setup versus the emitter with the newer kit that I got so again the tubing’s on here the quarter-inch tubing and the steak goes down here this is one on its own just so hard to turn and I know again you can’t like tell actually this one doesn’t feel as bad as the other ones but it’s not as easy to turn just as is but also because it’s kind of flimsily stuck anytime I try to turn it while it’s in the bed it like pops up or the TU Bean swivels around so I can’t turn it so I don’t like the usability of this as much but I do appreciate the diameter of it because I think if I was using carpan I’d probably need maybe like four emitters to get like the same coverage of these that are three emitters so like I said I’m still going to use see even now like I can’t easily open that back up oh also this just doesn’t really get very small so I think if I had I didn’t use this in anything that wasn’t erased bed everything that’s in a pot is the carpan cuz I just couldn’t get this diameter small enough could this all be user air possibly but at least that’s my opinion so far on this now what I think is funny and just kind of speaks to me as a person is that ideally what I would want then is the carpan system with a/ in tube instead of the what was it 38 inch tube and it exists I just didn’t see it until after I already ordered this kit that I have and I’d already put together so it’s not like I can return it now but I when I was first on Amazon I just searched for half inch drip irrigation kit or something like that and this popped up and the reviews overall I mean are still pretty good again it functions great just my personal preference on the emitters so when I was ordering additional pieces I then saw that there’s a new carpon system in fact let me pull it up because there’s also another feature that I was like oh I probably would have wanted to try that so let me see if I can find it again again but what this says about me and what happens I feel like all the time is when I want to do something and my husband’s the opposite which is a good balance but when I want to do something I want to do it now like if there’s a piece of furniture that got delivered that we have to set up I want to set it up now whereas he’s like you know what let’s read through the instructions make sure we have everything and I’m like no let’s just get started so that’s what kind of happened here I just I didn’t even think to search to see like how many different half inch kits there were I just searched for the first thing looked pretty good and got it so now let me see yeah here it is so this is and I will link everything below obviously I’ll link the ones the two that I have I will link this one that I probably would want and if I ever need drip irrigation in the future I’m going to try this one out um but this is the carpan drip irrigation kit new improved push to connect so this one comes with the half inch main tubing still has the quarter inch that connects to the emitters so not only does it have the larger diameter tubing than the original one but it has what is called the new improved push to connect which I watched the video and I can’t quite see how it works all the times that I’ve shown you where I’m twisting it in there it actually hasn’t been too bad this time because it’s been so hot which has heated up the tubing but when I’ve done this on days so it’s like 60 or 70 degrees my hands I mean even now I can kind of feel it a little bit on my fingertips my hands will get sore of trying to jam them on there together I actually have in the past used my teapot with boiling water to dip the tubing in and make it easier so I don’t know what those easy connects are but it makes it look like you just shove it in and there’s no hard work so that’s probably what I’ll try out next if I ever need a new system but as of right now I still have a good amount of the/ inch tuing a ton of quarter inch tuing this whole new box of emitters a ton of these emitters left so I’m not going to get that unless I need it at some point I’m going to work with what I have because again it functions fine I mean we’ll see it functions fine so far um so yeah I think that’s everything let me know if you have any irrigation questions down below that I can help you answer if this seems overwhelming I promise it seemed very overwhelming to me when I first got started but it is a very repetitive process in fact I think it’s easier than setting up Ikea furniture so once you get that down I feel like setting it up just kind of becomes second nature and then you can get more comfortable with the customization of it so yeah I would say definitely set this up in your garden not only to water for you just during the day so you can do other things but also for when you’re out of town it’s been fantastic for me so that’s going to be everything so let me know if you have any questions and I will see you in the next video where hopefully it’s no longer in the mid 90s bye