Palm Tree Bubbler Connection

[julie42]

Hello all.

I am a new hone ow er and have been investing a lot of time and money on the outside of my house. When I purchased this house it had only one shrub on the entire property. I hired a landscape contractor to install a deep well, irrigation, and to install all types of trees and shrubs. They contracted out the well and irrigation installation which they had installed before the plants where in. It made no sense to me to install the irrigation before the plants but they said that's how they do it.

None the less among other things I am moving heads and correcting other issues with the entire job. One thing I found is they have three foxtail palm tree bubblers tied into rotator zones that run for 25 min and one foxtail tied into a drip line that runs for 40 minutes. They installed 8 zones total and I wish one was just for the trees but there isn't one. Is it better to have the bubbler on the drip or lawn rotator zone. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Billeb]

It really boils down to GPH per tree. If the bubblers are 4gph and running for 30min, the tree is obviously getting 2G per watering event. If the drip emitter is 2GPH and running for an hour, it’s a bit of a wash. 
 

Depends on your soil too. if you have a medium that isn’t the best draining, it would be advantages to run your irrigation with smaller bubblers/emitters for longer durations vs the opposite. 
 

that being said…I think most will tell you it’s better to water longer in an attempt to deep water. You could be ok with the setup they installed. Although not ideal or the way you personally would have done it. There’s a lot of variables. 
 

-dale

[Billeb]

…another note. Generally it is better to have your trees/shrubs separated from your grass. That is how it should have been done. I for one irrigate my turf far less than my palms. My grass only gets irrigated every week maybe, my palms and shrubs are every 3 days. 
 

That would be the biggest issue I see with your current setup. 
 

-dale

[96720]

You absolutely should have a separate zone for trees!! If you decide for some reason not to water the lawn then your trees won’t be getting any water, the way they did it doesn’t make sense!!

[julie42]

yah! Thanks everyone for kind suggestions.

[Tyrone]

  On 6/6/2022 at 6:34 AM, julie42 said:

Hello all.

I am a new hone ow er and have been investing a lot of time and money on the outside of my house. When I purchased this house it had only one shrub on the entire property. I hired a landscape contractor to install a deep well, irrigation, and to install all types of trees and shrubs. They contracted out the well and irrigation installation which they had installed before the plants where in. It made no sense to me to install the irrigation before the plants but they said that's how they do it.

None the less among other things I am moving heads and correcting other issues with the entire job. One thing I found is they have three foxtail palm tree bubblers tied into rotator zones that run for 25 min and one foxtail tied into a drip line that runs for 40 minutes. They installed 8 zones total and I wish one was just for the trees but there isn't one. Is it better to have the bubbler on the drip or lawn rotator zone. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Expand  

Are you growing foxtail palms in London UK?

[Merlyn]

My front yard has two zones, it is the original valve setup from ~35 years ago.  Zone 1 is near the house and is mostly sprayers-on-a-stick facing outwards to the really tropical stuff.  Zone 2 is the original big yard popup rotating sprinklers.  Unfortunately my big palm/cycad bed up front is fed by zone 2, purely because the zone 2 line goes under the driveway and I really don't feel like digging up big chunks of stuff just to repipe it to zone 1.  Last spring I had to redo almost all of the yard sprinklers for a septic tank and drainfield install.  So I pulled all of them from a single line in zone 2.  Unfortunately it didn't occur to me at the time to put in a shutoff valve on that line.  But I know exactly where the pipe is, so I can easily dig up a few feet of line and install a shutoff.  That way in the rainy summer season I can just manually turn off all the yard sprinklers, and only use them during our annual May and October drought.  It's not as nice as having a Zone 3, but it might be a solution for your setup.