Ah, the rituals of spring such as the annual turning on of the irrigation system. With all this warm weather, the ground was getting dry. So, my husband and I do what we do every year to get the irrigation system — including drip lines, faucets, and hoses — ready.
It starts with closing all the hose bibs and the three drain lines, opened last fall in preparation for winter. If we forget any of the seven hose bibs or the drains, when we turn the outside water on at the main, we have water shooting everywhere. That’s step one.
Step two is to turn each station on to see if all the sprinkler heads are intact and if they actually work, if we can remember how the timer works. We discovered a broken rainbird head that had been hit by a flying trashcan in last week’s winds. We turned off the lines again.
Step three is digging up the ground around the sprinkler deep enough to screw the attachment pipe out and replace it with an unbroken one. Digging is my job. Fixing the pipes and installing the head is my husband’s job. His back won’t take the digging, and my brain refuses to work with irrigation!
Okay, on to step four. Turn the water back on and check each of five stations, Hurrah, only one head is slightly clogged. The same one that needs cleaning twice each season due to our very silty water. No big deal. Everything else works like a charm.
We replaced all the washers in each drip line attachment, every hose attachment, and in the handheld spray nozzles for step five. Step six is getting ready to turn on the drip system. This means I have to find all the emitters hidden under mulch, plants, or vines and check them. With our water we pretty much replace all emitters every year.
We are almost at the end with step seven. I drag out all the hoses and attach a sprinkler with its new washer to each one. Finally, I get to actually hand water and run the irrigation system the desired amount of time.
With this very early irrigation start up, we will be watching the weather carefully in case of a freeze. That means reversing all the above steps. Water off at the main. Open all the hose bibs and drains again. Drain all the hoses and finally open the hose bibs to let out any residual water. The joys of gardening in Nevada.
— JoAnne Skelly is an Associate Professor and Extension Educator, Emerita, University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. She can be reached at skellyj@unr.edu.
