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watson524

Container tomato drip irrigation question

watson524
10 years ago

Hi all,
I got my drip kit and set it up. I have a cherry tomato plant in a 5 gallon bucket so I put 2 drippers in it and then 2 larger containers that are about 24" across so I have 3 drippers in there. I originally had 1 and 2 in the containers but I didn't feel like it was spreading the water out enough. Today is the first day I really tested things and ran then for 10 minutes this morning. I'm leaving the program at 10 minutes every 24 hours. My question is this:
I had the 2 in the smaller container already set one turn down on the dripper which is somewhere around 1 gallon per hour. 5 minutes in, water was seeping out the bottom of the raised bucket so for tomorrow I'm going to lessen the flow on those heads. Make sense?
About 7 minutes in the second container started a slow drip out the bottom so i might take those 3 heads back a half turn or so.
The end bucket started dripping out the bottom right at the 10 minute mark so I think those are set ok.
I bought this kit because of these adjustable heads.
One thing I notice tho is that unless you're in the immediate area of the head, soil on top is still dry. Is this ok? I know when I water by hand I'd wet all of it but I also know that the roots are the concern and as water travels down, it also travels out. My indicator of how much water is always when a very slow trickle from the hose comes out the bottom of the container. Is this ok?

thanks!

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