Wednesday, 09 August 2017
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As i have some Trees located in a shrubs basin or in a lawn area in every project now:
1- Is the tree irrigation system enough to water the shrubs too? or i should consider the shrubs irrigation system seperately?
2- shall I exclude the trees from the lawn irrigation system?

Thanks
Nibal
6 years ago
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Nibal,
The very short and most simple answer to your questions is that it is totally up to you on how you want to irrigate. As the designer, you are going to need to have a vision about what the overall goal is with how the water is to be applied, what the plant will need as it grows, and how you intend on maintaining that irrigation system so it can adapt/grow with the plants as they mature.

Typically, trees should either be on their own valve, or have enough emitters to each tree to match the precip of the rest of the shrub zone. Understanding that shrubs will need a different amount and frequency of water than trees due to root zone, species, etc. So understanding this, I would not put the shrubs solely on the tree zone since you will need to be more frequent with watering shrubs over a longer span of time.

Trees in turf is always a risky move because you are literally combining the highest water need plant (turf) with a very low water use plant (tree), depending on the species of course. Again, going back to proper design and vision for what you are going for, the trees should not be placed in turf without a generous size tree ring surrounding it. Typically the tree ring should be the size of the tree canopy. This will not only help protect the tree from machine damage, but allow the tree proper irrigation and prevent soil compaction from foot traffic.

As the tree matures, you should be able to phase out the tree irrigation and allow the tree to live off of the turf irrigation water (since the roots of the tree will be spread throughout the turf area, using the turfs water as its own). Again, totally up to you.

I hope this helps answer your questions, and please note that this is just scratching the surface of things to consider and is not the only way to think about how you design or irrigate these types of situations.
Thanks alot Jake.. its really very helpful..
But may i ask for samples for how a typical irrigation plan looks like

1- for trees exclusion in shrubs area after setting the equipments and the pipe..
am a little bit confused about excluding the tree core only or the core with the irrigation system(one RWS+ one Bubbler) with the pipes connecting them together or without the pipes..

2- i can see that trees shouldnt be located in te lawn area..but for my project i did scematic irrigation for the lawn excluding the tree cores with the concept irrigation system(single block for RWS+ Bubbler located on the core ) , that existed in the lawn area..
but what can i do when i need to place the lawn irrigation system(sprinklers or rotors), and the tree iffigation system(RWS+Bubbler)
how can i exclude the trees the?
and if i can exclude the tree irriagtion system the lawn irrigatin will be affected for sure..
Jake is right as he always is. I'll elaborate a little more. Out in California it is standard of care (a legal term) to irrigate trees separately from shrubs. This was not he case 30 years ago, but it is now. It's common practice because we notice that trees and shrubs have different water needs (as Jake pointed out and you already know). If you run into a situation where the local agency prohibits watering lawns and shrubs (which has happened out here in California before), you can still irrigate your trees (which the agencies recognize as being more valuable for a few obvious reasons). So, yes. Trees are set up to irrigate on separate valves. Now, that gives the Irrigation Manager (IM) control. In many instances, after the trees are established, they need no supplemental water to remain healthy so the IM shuts that valve off. The adjacent shrubs remain on. Trees in lawns are a different animal too. To irrigation lawns you will want to keep the top 12 or so inches moist. The tree roots are much deeper. So supplemental irrigation is necessary at least during establishment. However, many a tree has been in distress (and died) due to being over watered in lawn areas during the lawn's establishment period (or just since the IM will not be good and would rather have the lawn over watered rather than under watered). So placement of de-watering/aerators is sometimes a good idea.This is just like the Rain Bird RWS without any irrigation. It allows the maintenance staff to see if they're over watering the lawn (since water will be at a soil depth lower than the root zone) and will also allow for pumping the water out. If it stinks when it's being pumped out with a hand pump, then there is an anaerobic environment (no oxygen) in the tree's root zone. This WILL kill the tree. I hope that the plant designer is using trunk guards around the base of the tree. I've seen too many trees die as a result of having their cambium layer removed by weed whips and banged up by lawn mowers.

But as Jake said, "It's totally up to you."
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