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Drip irrigation is the best way to help any plant to flourish and survive the tough times, especially short or long droughts. Pick the wrong “stuff,” and you can easily feel overwhelmed. Robert Kourik’s new book, Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates, clearly explains how to use less water yet increase the yields of vegetables and promote the growth and flowering of all plants—trees, shrubs, and container plants—in any climate, even where it rains irregularly.
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Everybody's reading it!
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In the tradition of the original ground-breaking book, this fully-revised edition incorporates new information essential for gardeners—how to manage limited water supplies with precision and efficiency, without the clutter of hundreds of widgets and gizmos. And, the knowledge is shared in Kourik’s inimitable friendly and down-to-earth, easy-to-understand style.
Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates reveals how to:
• Utilize drip irrigation for everything you grow—trees, shrubs, hanging plants, container plants, and vegetable and flower gardens. Plus, save up to 50 percent of precious water compared to sprinklers.
• Use a streamlined configuration of hardware and tubing.
• Choose the best, sturdiest hardware that will last for decades in your home landscape and vegetable garden.
• Pick special tubing that has no emitters punched on the outside—which have a tendency to break off, and how to use this tubing buried beneath the surface to irrigate without losing any water to wind or evaporation. [The secret: emitters are built inside the tubing, so the tubing rarely gets clogged.]
• Roll out a drip system in a very short period of time, avoiding tedious hours punching in emitters or adding smaller tubing to reach each plant.
• Use gray water and cistern water to reuse and capture these important sources of water for irrigation.
• How to construct a system that can effectively hide the main part or simply be attached to an existing garden faucet.
• Understand where roots grow, and how roots affect the placement of the emitters and timing of your irrigation.
• Start with a scientific schedule of irrigation times and adjust the schedule as your garden grows.
• Select the best timers and controllers to automate irrigation—even how to use satellite control, based on your garden’s actual changing climate.
Individual projects are carefully detailed and include: how anyone can construct a system by attaching it to an existing garden faucet or the main water supply, constructing larger assemblies for big gardens, irrigating all sizes of potted plants, easy ways to irrigate a vegetable garden, and how to lay out tubing for the best health of trees and shrubs.
CLICK FOR MORE DETAILS INSIDE THE BOOK
High praise from Sunset!
Drip Irrigation for Smarties
Posted by Sunset, July 30, 2009 in Tools of the trade
By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine
“Simple, but not easy” is how Robert Kourik sets things up in Drip Irrigation For Every Landscape and All Climates (Metamorphic Press, Occidental, CA, 2009; $24.95). That’s an apt description: the basics of drip are simple to understand, but assembling the parts can be work....
(and concludes) Fun book, great info. Buy it and save the world's water supply.
Praise for the First Edition
• “You can't predict a dry year, but you can learn to water wisely. Soaker hoses and drip systems use less water than sprinklers do. For information on drip systems, Robert Kourik's "Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates" is a good resource ( http://www.robertkourik.com).”
- From: What to Grow When Water's Scarce, by Barbara Damorsch in the November 1st, 2007 issue of the Washington Post.
• In 1996, the well-respected gardening newsletter the Avant Gardener selected Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates as number seven on its list of “25 best Books of the Past 25 Years.”
• “The ‘new Bible’ of drip - with drop-by-drop diamonds of wisdom. Replaces all previous books on the subject.” — Peter Warshall, Whole Earth Review.
• “Finally, there’s a complete reference on the subject [of drip irrigation]. With the book’s clear diagrams, [Kourik] makes installing a drip system look as easy as popping together a Lego™ set.” — Jack Ruttle, National Gardening Magazine.
Testimonials
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“We read and followed the drip instructions in the book, laying out the drip in rows 6 inches apart for our new veggie garden bed. Based on our calculations and the desire to have the sub-surface soil reach that Holy Grail of a barely-damp-sponge all the time, we run our system 3 times a day at 5 minutes. Pulling up some of the soil with a tool between plants revealed this perfectly barely damp soil. Within a week of planting, we have blossoms, no plant wilt and vigorous growth – not to mention no worries about dry or soggy, airless soil. Thank you!”
Betsy and Don, Santa Rosa, CA
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"My husband and I have been singing your praises lately—that inline irrigation tubing is the answer. We replaced our old spaghetti mess in the vegetable garden and it’s a marvel."
Ellen in Sebastopol, CA
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