Ok, I lied, its Citrus and "other" in ground tree irrigation although the majority is citrus. Having 30+ trees at this point and another 50+ planned(alot of those will be drip sprinklers for olives) I think my current method of manually watering them is going to get old quickly so I laid out a watering pipe plan into the existing lawn irrigation system which goes all over the yard(previous owner used it to keep dust down when riding ATVs) so the main equipment and part of the piping is already in place. Thing is what kind of sprayer? I have looked at home depot and thier selection(which remarkebly looks identical to Lowes) and I dont know whether I should get a wide sprayer for each tree or one of those mushroom water dispensers at each tree in the bowl where I planted it. Not trying to spray the whole yard but I want to make sure the root system gets it and spreads out accordingly.

What do you guys use?

I use 3/4 inch irrigation tubing and burry it between trees and let it come out of the dirt under the tree then I punch a small hole in the tube so the water sprays straight up. This is simple and cheap, it is my freeze protection and my irrigation. There are no drip tubes to freeze and no sprayers to brake or need to be replaced. I install irrigation systems in the greenhouses I contract to build and have access to all of the parts but prefer to do it the simple way. The wind does blow the spray so it covers a fairly large area and depending on pressure and the size of the hole you punch will determine the coverage. I currently have 4 zones and close to 100 trees with this type irrigation. I use Netafim tubing.

Hmm interesting idea, I will look into this. Typically I am less worried about freezing equipment but now that I said that I need to plan for a March mega-freeze since I just jinxed myself. I wonder how that will work with hard piping, guess I would need some kind of connector piece and end cap.

best and cheapest are drip tubes and fittings.

My soil is sandy loam with good drainage but not as sandy as yours. The reason I have so many zones is they are on different locations but all near my house and on the same 5 hp deep well pump. The holes in the tubing are not uniform, I grind a razor knife blade to a long sharp flat nail looking point and I can adjust the amount of water and the angle of spray if I don't mind getting wet in the process. As the trees get larger I can increase the volume by making the hole larger for the trees that need it. I will PM my number if you have any questions.

Most people are getting away from overhead irrigation because of the spread of disease. Where I have been using drip there is notably less weeds between trees or plants where there is no water. On tomatoes and such there seems to be a lot less disease. I certainly agree to use overhead sprinklers for freeze protection. In some places the micro misters are necessary to wet a larger footprint. A friend of mine is changing his micro misters to drip because he had too much disease on the bottom of his dwarf citrus trees. I think he will need more drippers to get more ground covered. The bottom branches were loaded. Tom

I agree that the overhead watering is the least desirable.

My problem is that the majority of the square footage in my young grove is dedicated to vegetables that change from season to season and with crop rotation. It kinda makes it easy to go overhead. As the grove matures trees get larger and I get
old(er) I will have less space to grow the vegetables in and less need for overhead irrigation. With that in mind I may set up three zones. One for the muscadines, one for the citrus and overhead just in the vegetable growing areas.

I really think that I am way ovethinking this as I know that eventually the citrus and muscadine roots will be shaking hands.

Hershell I appreciate the PM and will take you up on the call.