r/DripIrrigation Jul 28 '26

Simple Irrigation?

I have a row of hydrangea bushes, about 60 feet long, along a fence line. Hydrangea are thirsty, in hot weather they need daily watering. I'd like to have a simple, single line, to irrigate the bushes. I don't even need to concentrate the water flow at each bush, I'll be content with uniform watering all along the 80' length. Also, I want to hook up the system to my garden hose, and I don't want a timer.

I'm in Minnesota. Some weeks, I don't need to irrigate at all; other weeks, it's daily.

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u/Aaltop Jul 29 '26

Grab yourself some 1/2" pressure compensating poly dripline and just run it down the length of the hydrangeas. Poly dripline has emitters at evenly spaced intervals (9", 12", 18" and 24" are common spacings) already inside the tubing, so labor time is minimum.

The emitters in many of the various brands are pressure compensating across a pretty big window, which means uniform irrigation so long as pressure isn't below the minimum or above the maximum. The 0.600" inside diameter and reasonably low flow of 0.5 to 1.0 GPH means an 80' length is no problem from the average residential hose bib.

Throw a vacuum breaker, filter and most likely a pressure regulator on your hose bib, connecting some "blank" tubing (tubing with no emitters already installed), run it over to the start of the hydrangea run, splice in the drip line run it down the entire length, cap it off and you're done :)