Irrigation Info

Join our guest speaker, Mark who has been doing irrigation for 30+ years. 

We're talking about irrigation types, soil absorption, hand watering verses irrigation, and more. 

Let's learn something new! 

https://youtu.be/bQCObBXCRW4https://yardstopgardencenter.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What's up guys? Welcome back to the Yard Stop Garden Center Podcast. I'm your host, Emily, and today our guest speaker is Mark. Mark does our irrigation here at the Yard Stop, and today that's what we're going to be talking about. So, Mark, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Thanks for coming on.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Um, so we can jump right in if you want.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Let's go.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

I've got a lot of questions for you.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Um can I start off by asking you um how many different types of irrigation are there?

SPEAKER_01 0:30

There are several types. You got drip irrigation, um, you got misting systems, uh, in ground systems. Um pretty much pretty much does it.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

I actually didn't know that there were different types of irrigation, and I was doing some research before the podcast, and um I read that there were there's like several. And I'm sure you know which of those different kinds of irrigations you would use for specific um plants. So we can get into that too in a second. Um, how do you determine the right watering schedule for plants if you're using irrigation versus hand watering?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Well, the irrigation usually are set up in zones. Hopefully, they don't have it mixed with rotors and misters. Usually misters are spraying for the shrub material and so forth, and the rotors are for larger open areas. Um just basically the plant material will depend the terming the type of watering. Some use less, some use more, some don't like water.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

And they don't like water on them, but depending on where they're at.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Right. Um, what's an example of what plants would you use the like the drip irrigation for versus the sprinkler irrigation? And what's the difference? Obviously, it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

The drip irrigation, maybe if you get hanging plants on a big porch or something, you can run drips to each basket. Or if you got pots sitting on a patio, you run drip irrigation to those.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Right. Okay. If you are watering by hand instead of using irrigation, how do you know that you're watering accurately to the same amount as the irrigation system? That's kind of that's kind of a broad question, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yeah, that's kind of wide open there. I mean, it's depending on the plant material, again, like some of the plant material will take less.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Um, you know, and it's a finger test. You test, you know, you stick your finger in the soil, and if it's moist, you may not need to water.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Yeah. And if it's so you have to kind of keep an eye on it.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Right. Yeah, it's just kind of a by feel, other than well, I gotta go water today. No, it you don't need to because it doesn't need it maybe tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

The hotter it gets, of course, more frequently you're gonna need to.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Yeah. So you almost need to, depending on like the weather, if we get a lot of rain or if we're in a drought, you act you have to adjust your irrigation and check your soil.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

I just constantly like, I guess I think you just set up irrigation and it runs, and you don't have to ever really bother with it.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Well, there's another thing, irrigation systems, you can put a rain sensor on them. So you can set it to like a half inch of rain.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

We get three-quarters of an inch of rain. Well, the next time that system's supposed to run, it won't run until the sensor dries out.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

So you're not wasting water.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Okay. How much, or I guess I should say, how long, should you run your irrigation system for in the summer versus the winter?

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Winter time, it needs to be cut back almost in half.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Oh, that's a big difference.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Plants really aren't you don't see any growth on the top, a lot of the trees, some plants will defoliate, but the roots are still growing. You want to give them ample water, but not like the water they would get in the season of the hot, the hot weather.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

So hotter the weather gets, then you need the like springtime. We just turned ours up back up to the summertime water, which it can vary depending on if it's a rotor zone or a spray zone, but usually spray zones are like 30 minutes versus rotors can be 45 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Okay, that makes sense. Um, I think you had mentioned something about soil. Would you say that you know anything about the water absorption in soil and how you could improve that?

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Definitely, especially in Florida. It's the real sandy soil. Yeah, sand does not retain water. We do sell good amendment soil to put in with your landscape. It's called command, okay, which will hold probably 50 50% more water than it would if it was just put in the sand.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

So that will help retain and help the roots.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

That's a really important part. Um I I feel like that's a really important fact that people need to know before they put in their irrigation that just because you're running water for like, you know, 30 minutes in your lawn, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are the roots of those of that grass or your plants is actually retaining the water. Right. If it's crappy soil. Right. And it's interesting how they both really work together. The you know, proper soil with the watering.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

And it's important to do a deep water too, not just you know, spray it down, thinking, you know, just dust wash the dust off the plant. Okay, we're good. No, it needs to be watered deep so the roots will get all the moisture they need.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Right. How long does water need to run before it actually gets deep enough to water the roots of the plant properly?

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Again, that's kind of a broad question. It can I mean it's just kind of have to use your head on that, just knowing your soil types or whatever and your plant types just to make sure that they get enough water.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Yeah. Right. Would you say that um using irrigation is energy efficient, more like compared to hand watering?

SPEAKER_01 6:18

It is. It is. It definitely makes it a whole lot easier. That way you're not standing out there for hours, you know, with your hose. And hopefully it's mixed, it's not mixed where you got the zones with uh spray head and rotors, because these spray zones will put out twice as much water in that in a short period of time than the rotors. The rotors take longer. Um I think that's wow.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

How long how long have you been doing irrigation for?

SPEAKER_01 6:50

A long time. Probably 30 plus years.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Yeah. What got you into it?

SPEAKER_01 6:56

I just loved plant material and um making places look nice. So I ended up getting a job with a landscape company down south and was the manager of the property, and we had irrigation and landscape, and right it just it's kind of uh I never went to school for just kind of a hands-on just picked it up as it went along.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Did you ever work on a big um like crop farm, if you will, where they run those huge irrigations?

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Pretty much amazed me. I drive by and I see the uh see the tracks getting watered, and it's just yeah, yeah. That's a whole different ballgame.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

That's a that's basically commercial irrigation. Right. Okay. Um for someone who wants to get irrigation, but they've never had it before, where should they start and what do they need to know about installing it themselves or getting it installed?

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Well, YouTube is a wonderful place to gain knowledge for things. And I mean, there's a lot of good information on YouTube, and then there's some, you know, kind of haphazard things, but most of the time there's really troubleshooting and figuring stuff out, but figuring it out, you might want to leave it to the professionals to to lay out a system, but it's really not. It's hydraulics is pretty easy.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Just figure your coverages and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Okay. Um, and we do that as part of our our landscape. We do we will do that for customers if they wanted irrigation put in. I guess I should mention something about our zone, our Lake County zone, zone 9B. Um irrigation is obviously different for different zones.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Right? Okay. Just wanted to clarify that. But I I think I knew that.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

We're uh classified as a semi-tropic, but semi tropic. Last January wouldn't have thought that for sure. But uh you can grow tropicals here versus you know the northern warm material, the hard, the harder stuff, but they still have the tropical plants that'll grow.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Speaking of the freeze, you're does irrigation does it can freeze, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Yes, it can.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Oh man. I mean, I guess it's it's not like it's gonna crack like pipes, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Oh, it does.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Oh, it cracks.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

Oh, yes. Oh the up north, they'll go through and blow out their systems with a air compressor or whatever, so no water's standing in the pipes. So thing above ground, well, we had quite a few issues here. Luckily the plant material was protected, but the pipes still are subject to it.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

And how do you what's a way to prevent them from cracking? Do you just leave them on?

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Um try to try to drain it down. Okay, find your lowest head for the zone and just take it off and then just let all the water drain that way, and then you should they should be good.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

But it's just kind of a test, you know. And it has to get really cold. This last winter we did have a low freezing for many hours, and that will all do some damage.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah. What are some problems? What are some irrigation issues that we have had to navigate here at the yard stop? And I guess we as in you, because you do all the irrigation here at the store.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

So we have all probably 300 trees under drip irrigation, and it goes through a small hose to an emitter, and the emitters do get clogged up. So we have to make sure they stay clean. Walk them, walk the tree lines, every zone, every emitter is looked at on the days that I'm in.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

And then we test the overheads for the open areas in the nursery.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Right. You do that daily, you said, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:12

Just uh I do two days a week with Mondays and Friday checks. That way I make sure everything's water for the weekend. Right. And if anything new comes in, I make sure that everything is put on water, that it will have water. And then Mondays, same thing checked so that have water during the week.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

And you said you clean it out. How do you clean it?

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Do you just run the I just did while it's running, unplug it, and if there's any little particles, because it's a small orifice with the emitter.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

And they do get clogged up pretty easy. Just undo it, let it clean out, and put it back together.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

I know you were here like at five in the morning when we had that freeze.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

What were you doing?

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Um water when it's frost is called for, low, you know, upper 30s with no wind, we'll get frost. So I run 30 minutes each zone to water the area. Our groundwater is 65 degrees, so yeah, that will warm that area up to where the frost won't settle on the plants. Right. And go through, and that it's just about every overhead zone that we have on property.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Have to do that third, well, 15, 15 to 30 minutes, depending on how large.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Right. And how many types of irrigation do we use here at the yard stop? I know we mentioned we talked about spray and drip.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

We have for the vegetables and herbs. We have a it's kind of a misting system for them. We have the drip lines for the trees and palm trees in some areas, and then we have overhead for everything else.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

And they're all on different timers.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

They are.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Wow. That's a full-time job right there.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Eleven satellite timers and two time clocks.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Wow. So well, I think we would uh we'd be lost without you. So I'm glad we have all your knowledge here.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Um well, guys, that's it for today. Thank you so much for tuning into our podcast. If you would like to learn more about irrigation or if you'd like to get a free quote on having us put it in, um, that's part of our landscape service here. So feel free to visit our website, theyardstopgardencenter.com, and we'll see you guys in the next episode. Bye.