Potted plants, flower beds, vegetable gardens, lawns… Not sure what irrigation system suits your outdoors best? One thing for sure: regardless of the watering itself, rainwater collection is almost a must to save water and protect our planet. Let’s clear up the subject to help you see better! Discover 6 irrigation systems for the garden.
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Watering with a watering can takes time! That’s why this tool is only preferred for balconies or small city gardens. Don’t hesitate to leave your watering can outside so that it fills up when it rains.
Rainwater is the best water for watering your plants.
Be sure to water at the base of the plant, or even fill the saucer if it’s a potted plant. It will then drink water with its roots by capillarity, as it would in the open ground. However, don’t let water stagnate in the saucer: remove it after an hour, or it’ll rot away the roots. Watering late in the evening or early in the morning helps limit evaporation.
No more back and forth from tap to plant, manual watering with a hose allows you to roam around the garden.
Often, nozzle heads come with several modes with varying pressure and spray width. Thus, you can adapt your watering as you move from one plant to another. Setting up a hose-based garden watering system requires a little work, like setting up an adapter on the faucet and finding a way to store the hose, but it’s very affordable.
Each system suits a different size of garden and a different way of delivering water. Use the table below to narrow down the choice before reading the detail on each one.
| System | Best suited to | How the water is delivered | Setting up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Watering can | Balconies and small city gardens | Poured at the base of the plant, or into the saucer of a pot | Nothing to install; leave it outside to fill with rain |
| Hose and nozzle | Moving from one plant to another around the garden | Several modes with varying pressure and spray width | A tap adapter and somewhere to store the hose; very affordable |
| Oscillating sprinkler | Rectangular areas of lawn | Multiple long sprays in a line, rotating 180° | Reach, trajectory and sometimes duration can be set |
| Circular sprinkler | Open lawn and large cultivation areas | Continuous spray through a full rotation | Rotation degree, water pressure and spray distance are adjustable |
| Cannon sprinkler | Very large areas like fields | Jets sent out very far at regular intervals | Needs the space and the pressure to match |
| Drip irrigation | Vegetable gardens and flowerbeds | Exactly what the plant needs, at the base, with no wet leaves | Main hose plus secondary hoses, then schedule frequency and duration |
| Oyas (ollas) | Holidays and absences of up to two weeks | Porous terracotta releases the water gradually | Bury or set near the plants and fill before leaving |
Whichever you choose, rainwater collection remains the one addition that saves water whatever the system.
You would use sprinkler irrigation for lawns or large cultivation areas.
You can choose either a buried or a surface irrigation. Buried irrigation is more discreet and only rises out of the ground to do its job.
On the contrary, surface sprinklers are more mobile, so you can move them around as needed to cover a large area.
Watering at night helps limit water consumption due to low evaporation. Some designs connect to a rain gauge and stop supplying water when it rains or when it’s rained recently.
This type of sprinkler emits multiple long sprays in a line and rotates 180°.
You can customize:
Check that the hose tension doesn’t make it tip over for designs where the base isn’t as wide.
These are the funnest by far for children to play with!
Circular models rotate 380° without ever stopping to spray water.
You can then adjust:
to adapt the watering to your garden’s surface area.
True to their name, these garden watering systems send out water jets very far at regular intervals. They are generally used to water very large areas like fields.
Drip irrigation is precise. It gives the plant exactly what it needs at the base. So, no waste of water or wet leaves. Ideal for the garden and flowerbeds, it limits the occurrence of diseases like downy mildew.
Unlike sprinkler irrigation, it targets only plant roots, not the weeds around them! It works with a main hose and secondary hoses that reach all plants to water. Near the plants in question, you can place drip heads, misters or sprinklers. So, each plant receives water in the best way for its growth. Once everything is set up, you just have to schedule the frequency and duration of watering.
If you don’t have an automatic watering system, going on vacation can cause some concerns. Don’t panic, there are solutions to this problem:
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