Recommendations on Irrigation System

[mooman]

does anybody have any? the Garden is set up in 4ft beds with a central isle left untilled. Left side of isle are 11 75ft beds and on right side are 11 35ft beds.

I'm looking for a low cost solution (who isn't right?). I would love to be able to water the whole garden with one turn of a valve, but zones would be ok too. I need to go with with some form of drip irrigation as sprinklers aren't very socially responsible not to mention cost effective.

I've found alot of sites that specialize in drip tubes and the like, but wondered if anyone has had posiitve or negative experience with any companies or sites in particular

 

[whatnow?]

I'm a drip irrigation fan. Your system is going to be quite large in comparison to those that I have used.

The type is going to depend on the crop. Row crops that are close together are probably better irrigated using dripline but I don't know how long of a row you can do with the small diameter tubing. Individual plants should be able to be irrigated with drip emitters off of a 1/2" hose run parallel to the row. I haven't had good luck with small diameter soaker hose... by the end of the season, whole sections stopped flowing.

If you have good pressure, you may be able to water using 1 timer and a manifold with valves to regulate flow. This won't work with pressure regulating emitters. I've found that too much pressure drop on the pressure regulating type drip emitters will cause them to stop flowing altogether, so I couldn't water my geraniums up on the patio railing while I was watering my garden (they were either flooding the plants or they were off.) If this is the case, you'll need at least two timers, or three, or four.

I am trying to justify a Rainbird system which can handle several zones for $60-$75 plus $12 per valve because I've found the spigot models to have spotty reliability and are difficult to program (I'm a licensed engineer, so I'm not a total moron.)

drip depot has a lot of good information about the systems