Drip irriation in the vegetable garden

something I like to share with you all.........

I have been using drip irrigation for quite some years in my vegetable garden, and some years, when it was hot and dry for some time, I have had really bad results, growing from seed. It wasn't too big of a problem when I was there and able to hand water the seeded areas, but this year the results were terrible. See, I spent some time away from my garden visiting family in Germany and before I left I planted all my seeds, thinking they will be growing while I'm gone being on automated watering..........didn't work out! I came back and hardly anything had sprouted.

So I researched and this is what I figured out........
Drip irrigation, even it saves you a lot of water and it works great with transplanted vegetables, does not work well for growing from seed. It just doesn't keep the surface wet enough for seeds to sprout.
So after researching, I have come to the conclusion, you really need 2 different set-ups on separate timers for the vegetable garden.
One for seeds, with mini-sprayers you use when starting seeds.......and one for the established plants, with drip irrigation to save on water.
You need them separate, because I have put little sprayers into my drip line before but this uses too much water since both run at the same time and gets it too wet, so I turned most of these off.

So now I have ordered another timer and irrigation supplies and after the Oregon Country Fair, I will be tweaking my irrigation once more again.......seems like I spend a lot of time on this already this year;)

But I bet my seeds will be happier and sprouting.And now I should be getting ready to go outside.......have more re-seeding to do ......day two of reseeding;)