Water distribution to a bunch of newish fruit trees?

[jeff9366]

Why not run the drip line say at 3 ft+ height and position the emitter to drip at the trunk.
Easy to see, easy to work on and depending on the mower a 5ft high main line you can mow under.

Most vineyards in California are irrigated this way. Liquid form nutrients, if needed, are pushed through the line.

Coyotes occasionally knaw the feed lines when thirsty.

 

[jigs_n_fixtures]

Are all the trees in rows? Why not just run the drip line say at 3ft+ and let the drip line drip at the trunk. Easy to see, easy to work on and depending on the mower a 5ft high main line you can mow under.

Drip emitters should be placed in a circle, slightly outside the drip ring of the Tree. In nature, the rain is deflected out and falls at the outside of the tree canopy. That is where the roots which can actually absorb moisture are.

Use the emitter tube, and staple it to the earth below your cutter height.

 

[Carl_NH]

We installed 40 5-6' Norway spruce -20" root ball May 13-14 this year with a 1/2" poly feeder line and drip emitters (6 per tree .5 GPH each which was about 30" circle) on a mechanical Orbit timer -2 hours every 4 days gets them 6-7 gal a week.

The thing about drip emitters is keeping the barbed connections clean during installation . I buried the main line 6-7" and feeder lines 2-3" deep then emitters were covered with 2-3" of leaf mulch/compost around the base of the trees.

With under 1" of rain in 60 days from May 1 to June 30th, the trees have grown 12" in two months.

 

[California]

Sounds like most of this discussion is household-scale fruit trees.

We're slightly larger, at about 80 tons harvest in good years. A thousand apple trees when every spot on the grid has a tree. But the trees are various ages. I doubt any remain from the original 1880's planting. So every few years we replant the spots where an ancient tree collapsed.

I tow a watering trailer zig-zagging all over the place to the random locations of the new trees. 15 gallons into a levee around each tree at 3 week intervals the first year, a few times per summer in years 2 to 5. Trees that still don't look hardy, a few more years.

This watering rig is an IBC Tote (300 gallons filled to runover) with a HF sump pump down inside and a handheld wand. It's on a HF 4'x4' trailer. Gross overload but I've never broken anything, aside from bending the flimsy tongue backing uphill in soft ground with the 8" tires plowing instead of riding on the surface. After reinforcing the tongue I switched to 13" automotive tires.

The orchard is mostly sloped. Note the water level in the tank. The little 18hp Yanmar is pulling hard to get the tank up some of the grades.

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