Courtesy of John S., Blue Ribbon Eggs, Franklin, NC
With your ‘Mediterranean’ type weather system long, dry summers are your problem. Evaporation and plant scorching from any type of over-head system is going to be challenging. I would think some conformation of drip would be a natural for you.
Drip is fabulous. I highly recommend Drip Depot. They’re located in Oregon so they’ll have a solid grasp on your climate challenges. (www.dripdepot.com)
I installed a system in my Blueberry patch 4 years ago and have hardly touched it. We can have very wet periods as well as protracted droughts. A lovely lady on the phone patiently helped me design my system, (Ten one hundred foot rows, ten feet on center with bushes five feet apart in the rows). Installation took me about four hours, no tools, all hand tightened connectors. She helped me select materials that can be used for our pressured house system or changed to gravity feed later (simply unscrew the in line pressure regulator and reconnect).
The whole thing cost me $235 including freight, and it covers almost a quarter acre. It had taken 8-10 hours of hand watering each time (about once a week when the plants were small; 2-3 years old and very tender). After I put it in I was resting on the porch having a cold beer(or two) and the wife came home and asked, “What’cha doin”? “Watering”. Now that’s farming!
They now also have pre-set lines for row cropping that have ’emitters’ (pre-formed holes in the line every 12″, 18″ or 24″, your choice) that I am thinking about. You’d have to move and modify over the season as your rotations changed so you could cultivate, but I would rather move a hose 3x a season, if need be, than every week or two. My tiller cuts an 18″ bed, so I reckon that two lines with 12″ drip emitters would do the job for my beds
