Irrigation

Summer’s a beautiful season with all that sun, low rainfall and nice warm temperatures that extend late into the evening. There’s nothing you could possibly complain about, right? Not unless you’re a plant!
All the factors that make a New Zealand summer such a wonderful time for us also make it incredibly difficult for your garden as plants struggle to extract as much moisture from the soil as possible in order to flourish.
While it is possible to stand out with a hand-held hose every evening or morning (the two best times of the day for watering), a second option is to use garden sprinklers. However, these often tend to spread the water too far, or not far enough, making them inefficient.
The installation of an irrigation system designed specifically for your garden isn’t nearly as difficult to achieve as it sounds.

Neta’s modular irrigation system is suited to most types, shapes and sizes of gardens. It reduces the chore of watering your garden to the simple turning on of a tap, while providing an efficient system designed around the different aspects of your garden.
The Neta system is centred on water delivery tubing and utilises a range of different sprinkler heads, drippers or rotor sprays, as well as different lengths of risers to reach different plants or sections of the garden.

The in-store display is like a child’s pick’n’mix and is almost as much fun with a huge range of different components to choose from. However, it pays to plan ahead before you rush off to buy what you need.
The key things to keep in mind when deciding on spray heads is the amount of water your plants will require and what ‘form’ they need it delivered. For example, a strawberry plant in a trough will require water delivered in a different fashion to a row of lettuces or celery plants, while a compact flower garden filled with summer colour will have different needs again.
To cater to these varying requirements, the water delivery fittings on the Neta system are designed with different spray patterns, water quantities and spray distances, so you can create a complete irrigation system.
How To takes a look through the range:
Pipes
Pipes on the Neta system come in three sizes – 19mm, 13mm and 4mm.
The 19mm tubing is used to deliver water from the supply to the start of the 13mm garden line. The 4mm tube is used to connect drippers, misters and stakes positioned away from the main pipe.
Fittings
These consist of a variety of joiners, tees, elbows and plugs designed to allow you to lay your garden line wherever it needs to go. There are also reducing joiners and tees for where a 19mm line feeds into a 13mm line.
One important item is an inline filter, which is designed to filter out particles from the water supply before it enters the garden line, where it can block up spray heads.
In addition, nail clips and saddle clamps allow tubing to be fixed to fences or pergolas, while ratchet clips are essential when joining pipe to barbed fittings.
To make things really simple, a punch spanner is a handy three-in-one tool that makes holes in garden lines as well as fitting heads to the top of risers.
Micro sprays
These have a fine spray that makes them suitable for small garden beds and flowers. They can be fitted directly into the water feed pipe or onto rigid risers of various lengths. They can also be fitted onto stakes away from the pipe by using 4mm jointers and riser tubes, allowing them to be repositioned if required.
Micro sprays are available in spray patterns of 90°, 180°and 360° and have a range of spray distances (radius) available. They can also be obtained as adjustable heads that allow flow and spray distance to be altered.
Micro sprinklers
If your garden needs a larger droplet size than micro sprays, a micro sprinkler is the Neta solution. These are high-performance, durable sprinklers that spray in a full circle and are really ideally suited to larger gardens. Adjustable versions as also available to allow flow and spray distance to be varied.
Spectrum sprays
Although only available with a 360° spray pattern, spectrum spray heads deliver slightly more water than micro sprays and come with an adjustable cap that allows regulation of the pattern and volume of water.

Drippers
These come in a variety of types, depending on what your watering requirements are. One of the most versatile is the 360° flow dripper, which can be adjusted to allow precise watering in a tight circular pattern. This can be plugged directly into the pipe or into a riser and adjusted to deliver up to 50 litres of water per hour.
When you’ve planned your garden irrigation system and obtained the necessary components, roll out the pipe, place a block or brick on each end to hold it in place and leave it in the sun for a couple of hours to straighten out.
Using secateurs to give a clean, straight cut, divide the 13mm garden line into the sections required, then lay them in place where they are required. Then, using tee joints, or elbows, make the joins where they are needed, securing the pipe to the fittings with the ratchet clips. If it’s difficult to insert the fittings into the pipe, dip the end in hot water to make it malleable.
It is possible to bend 13mm pipe around a gradual curve, but if it kinks, cut the pipe and install an elbow.
Where required, fix the pipe to fences, walls or garden edging using the nail clips, then install the filter at the start of the line before running the 19mm main water feed line and connecting it to the 13mm pipe with a reducing joiner.
When installing the lines, take care not to get any dirt or debris inside, as this will clog sprayers and drippers later. To reduce the likelihood of this, flush water through the pipes when they are connected to remove any dirt before installing the end plugs.

Use the punch spanner to make a hole in the pipe	Insert the riser (if required)	Fix the required head to the top of the riser (or directly into the pipe) with the punch spanner	Turn on the tap and watch to sprayer go to work

Using the punch spanner install the risers, drippers and sprays where required and test the system. Before finishing off fix the pipes and risers in place using garden stakes and cover the pipes with soil or mulch to hide them away.