In this article, I will discuss the setup I use to add drip irrigation to large pots and grow bags. I put drip rings of various sizes in bags and containers. I make these rings to fit the container and provide consistent water to them.
The supplies I use were purchased from Drip Depot. I use their Pot Dripper Stakes with 1/4″ Drip Line, and 1/8″ Polyethylene tubing to connect them to the main line.
Most of our grow bags are 10 gallon. For these, I find that 4 emitter rings work well. I just cut the drip lines to include 4 emitters, cutting at the midpoint between emitters. The drip line I use has a 6″ spacing between emitters, and each emitter puts out 0.5 gallons per hour.
The dripper stakes have 4 posts: two on the sides for the 1/4″ drip line, one post for the 1/8″ feed line, and a post for capping off if you don’t want water to come out of this ring.
The 1/4″ drip line is attached to one of the side posts.
For taller or bushier plants, the stake can now be put into the bag and the drip line run around the base of the plant and pushed onto the other post of the stake. I am showing it fully assembled here for clarity.
Here’s the finished drip ring.
Here is a main line running along a row of grow bags. I’ll be installing the drip rings in these bags.
Here it is installed in a grow bag with a pepper plant.
Next we attach the feeder line into the main line. For that we use a punch tool. The one I like best is this crimping style punch tool. I got this one off of Amazon, but Drip Depot carries them also. It has different adapters for different size tubing.
Simply push the tool over the tube and squeeze the handle.
The 3mm punch cuts a hole into the tube.
This hole is slightly smaller in diameter than the 1/8″ feeder line.
The end that is inserted into the main line is cut at a 45 degree angle and inserted into the main line.
These are easy to connect and require no adapters. Since the water pressure is reduced to 10 – 25 psi (I use mainly 15 psi pressure regulators), there is no leaks at these connections.
Here’s the installed drip ring. I will usually run these for about 15 minutes per day. That puts about 1/2 gallon of water into each grow bag. Since they dry out fairly quickly, this keeps the soil moist.
A note on reusing these 1/8″ tubes: you may need to re-cut the angle cut in order to reinsert it into a main line, as it may not insert easily. They bend more at the point it was seated in the main line, so re-cutting them above that point usually solves that issue.
Since the holes on these stakes are small, and our water is pretty hard, the stakes do get clogged. I made this hose adapter for testing and cleaning out stakes. I attach this to a hose, and then attach the 1/8″ line to a stake, and turn on the valve on this adapter. If water sprays out both sides of the stake, it’s good. If it doesn’t, I use a 1/16″ drill bit to clean out the holes on the stake, and then reflush it with the adapter.
