Orbit Drip Line Irrigation System for Raised Vegetable Beds

You guys know I love to garden…

So it may come as a surprise that I have never used drip irrigation in my life. Never, ever. Every thing I have ever grown, harvested or inadvertently killed, I have done through my hand watering (or, more often, lack of watering).

After losing my entire tomato garden when Jonathan and I left our house in the hands of a house sitter over the summer when we went on our cross country road trip, I decided it is time to look into installing drip line irrigation. Not to mention that watering on schedule is a near Herculean feat with two toddlers running amok.

I reached out to Orbit Irrigation, and they were amazing enough to walk me through the whole process, literally step by step by step!

About Orbit Irrigation

More about Orbit Irrigation, from their website (CLICK HERE to visit):

Whether you are enjoying your lush, green lawn, admiring the way landscape lights illuminate a pathway, clearing your driveway after the first snow of the year, or relaxing in the comfort of your home, there is a good chance you’re experiencing the work of Orbit.

Since our founding the Orbit name has been associated with innovative and high-quality home improvement products. Today, we carry those traits with us as we expand our vision to become the world’s leading home improvement products company. Our mission is to empower and inspire customers to improve their homes by providing innovative, easy-to-use products with unmatched value.

With facilities worldwide, Orbit is the world leader in manufacturing and supplying irrigation, misting, and home improvement products to homeowners in forty countries across five continents. Our manufacturing capabilities span the scope of national and international product development and design, skilled engineering resources, and state-of-the-art injection molding facilities.

Quality & Innovation

In our pursuit of creating products that exceed customers’ expectations, we have meticulously defined and refined processes to insure providing the best quality products at the best value to our customers.  But like any leading company, we’re not satisfied resting on past achievements.  Orbit is dedicated to constantly improving our current lineup and bringing new products to better help our customers realize savings of time, water and money. 

Unrivaled Customer Support

We want customers to be satisfied with our products; their functionality, durability and simplicity.  We’re committed to providing industry leading customer support, and in using all tools at our disposal—both new and traditional—to help you complete your home improvement tasks; to help you find the right product for the job, get it installed correctly and keep it running in top shape.

My Experience With Orbit Drip Line Irrigation

First of all, by *my experience*, I mean, my experience watching my husband put it all together, while I read the instructional articles and package inserts and snapped photos. I also did that maddening thing wives are required to do, where I nitpicked the way he did everything, but then refused to take over when offered. (It is a secret pleasure, dont deny it ladies.)

So Orbit drip line products are recognized as a leader for simplifying drip watering and saving up to 70% in water use… And boy, have they earned this reputation. Their products are easy to install (to either a hose / faucet or into standard irrigation systems) and is completely open to personal customization.

Although Orbit offers dozens of free online how to guides (CLICK HERE TO VIEW), Justin Siebenhaar, an Orbit Digital Brand Specialist, went above and beyond customer service in helping me define and break down my watering needs, explaining how to achieve them, and then giving detailed instructions for each and every possible step and option available.

Which is amazing, because I really didn’t want to admit that the thought of installing a drip line is absolutely frightening to me. I have no idea what the heck I am doing, and didn’t want to seem like a dolt and ask dumb questions.

But these awesome folks at Orbit were super sweet and walked me through the process, step by step. I mean, I am seriously blown away with the customer service. So with information in hand, hubby and I tackled this project over the weekend, after the madness of the holidays, and when we could send the kiddos off to Grandmas for a bit.

Even with the detailed instructions, I still felt a little lost when we opened the box. It is almost like my brain expected it to be far more complicated, so I was making up imaginary hurdles. For instance, the thought of ending a tube line scared me. How do I seal it? Sure, it says use the figure 8 clamp, but HOW?! Do I use some kind of waterproof tape? Do I caulk it?

Same with the barb connectors. So you punch a hole where you want to add a line.. but we were puzzled about how the barb connectors attach to the smaller lines. Do you just push them together??? That just seems… too easy? It cannot be as easy as cut, clamp, punch, attach, and go on your merry way… can it?!

Well, apparently, it can. It really is that easy.

Crazy easy way to end a main tube… just clip on this figure 8 clamp and voila! Line ended.

I thought this irrigation hole punch was sooooo cool. Just pierce where you want a drip line or soaker line to shoot out, stick in a barb connector, and stick the line on. DONE!

So you basically map out how you would like your garden to run and what your watering needs are. Then you route the main tube lines to each bed, snipping the tube and cinching it with those cool figure 8 clamps pictured above. From each of these main tubes, you use the nifty hole puncher wherever you would like drip lines to branch out. And that is it. No, really. CRAZY, amirite?!

There are both larger and smaller ground stakes to secure the larger and smaller drip lines in place. The larger stakes were able to stake down through a couple of inches of decomposed granite, so they arent going anywhere.. a major plus with two toddlers, a golden retriever and six cats running around the garden!

I haven’t even planted my garden yet, and I don’t know how I ever lived without this gadget.

We are waiting on a shipment of heirloom elephant garlic to arrive, and then we will be getting our garlic in the ground ASAP. Since we fill all four raised beds with garlic each winter / spring and harvest our garlic fairly early, we are just installing soaker hoses in each bed for now, in a cool Kingdom Hearts heartless shaped design, to encircle each 4 inch elephant garlic bulb. (Our beds only really allow for 6 elephant garlic plants per bed.)

Once we harvest our garlic and fill each bed with a myriad of plants, we will be going absolutely nuts on the watering configuration, taking advantage of all types of available watering Orbit Irrigation provides.

This is crazy cool. Seriously! No more wasted water.. something desperately needed in this California drought! Disregard the water puddle on the side of the bed… that was us being dorks and turning the water on before attaching the hose to the elbow bracket thingy! haha…

Once your water lines are all hooked up, you can customize the timing of the water being released with the handy dandy 4-port hose water timer. This gives you four individually-programmable valves with different programmable options for each line. It can water multiple times a day, and you can choose which days they run. It is seriously SO. FREAKING. COOL.

Once you have your main lines out, you can install soaker hoses, drip lines, misters, sprinklers.. and you can put these in any shape / location / manner that you choose. The possibilities really are endless!

Some of the fun gadgets and attachments, making any variety of configurations possible!

Some of the options that I am planning to use this coming summer, are installing little flag dripper tabs to open or close the water to individual lines, so you have complete control over how much water each line receives.  I also plan on using some stake misters on some of the delicate leafy greens this California sun always insists on burning. Here are some stock image from Orbit showing what I am talking about:

You can mix and match and customize to your hearts content, and with the lines and accessories being so cost efficient, you can easily move things around by season or year if you need to rotate your crops.

Seriously, I could go on and on about this set up, but my word count is warning me that if I go on much longer, you guys will end up falling asleep on me, haha! So anyway, yeah, COLOR ME IMPRESSED! I am so freaking jazzed about this upcoming gardening season.. I truly do feel it will be the best yet! HUGE thank you to Orbit Irrigation for all of their help in taking my gardening to the next level. You guys ROCK!

[Disclaimer: There are no affiliate links in this review. I am an independent product reviewer. I only review products I am truly interested in. I don’t accept payment for reviews. The products I take the time to jabber on about are either items I have personally purchased, or the product has been provided for review after me initiating contact and incessantly nagging for a sample. All of my reviews are unbiased regardless of how the item was obtained.]

Do you use drip irrigation for your gardening? Share below!