Your garden,
thoughtfully watered.

1. Describe your garden. Enter dimensions in feet, quantity, crop and growth stage. Add multiple crops inside a bed and assign their shares of its planted area. Use separate growing areas for different physical setups. Select Early · establishing for seed/transplant guidance.
2. Choose your drip hardware. Inline dripline includes emitters; point emitters are separate. Use the actual GPH rating, spacing or emitter count. Choose “Use my equipment” when designing around an existing setup.
3. Set weather and water supply. Use simple estimates or look up your city/ZIP, choose the location, load weather and apply it. Rain replacement is optional. Enter source GPM or a bucket test. Weather needs internet; manual planning works offline.
4. Mark what you own. Check an item only if you have enough compatible equipment. Measure your mainline route, including branches.
5. Read and test the plan. Weekly gallons cover the whole garden. Runtime applies to each zone; operate zones separately. Check wetting at roots, pooling and drainage before relying on the schedule. Newly planted seeds and transplants need the first-week checks.
6. Save or take it outside. Valid changes save in this browser when storage is available. “Save garden file” makes an editable backup; “Load garden file” restores it. “Download readable plan” creates a report; “Print / save PDF” uses your browser’s print options. Refresh old weather inputs before use.

Trying an example replaces your current garden. Save a garden file first if you want to keep it.

Growing area

One planted bed, plot, or container footprint. Exclude paths. Quantity repeats identical areas; add crop shares within a bed; use separate entries for different physical setups.

Emitter

The small outlet that releases water slowly near a plant. Its flow rating tells you how much water it delivers per hour at the specified pressure.

Inline dripline

Tubing with emitters already built in at regular intervals. You buy the tubing with the required emitter flow and spacing.

Point emitter

A separate outlet placed where a plant needs water. Several emitters may be needed to wet a larger root area.

GPH — gallons per hour

Usually the rating of one emitter here. For example, 8 emitters at 0.5 GPH use 4 gallons per hour together.

GPM — gallons per minute

Used for the water source. Multiply GPM by 60 to get GPH. A 2 GPM source delivers 120 GPH before the design reserve.

Bucket test

Measure how long your source takes to fill a known-size bucket. GPM = gallons × 60 ÷ seconds. This estimates flow, not operating pressure.

Emitter spacing / line spacing

Emitter spacing is the distance between outlets along a dripline. Line spacing is the distance between parallel driplines across a bed.

Lateral

One dripline branch running along a growing area. This planner keeps each lateral intact when assigning zones.

Mainline

The supply tubing carrying water from the source toward the drip branches. Its length, diameter and fittings affect pressure loss.

Zone

A section watered separately. Run one zone at a time in this plan. Zones can be needed because of limited source flow or different watering schedules.

Design capacity / utilization

This planner uses 75% of measured source flow, reserving 25%. Utilization is a zone’s share of that reduced capacity, not a pressure guarantee.

Runtime / watering event

Runtime is how long one zone operates per event. An event is one watering session; events per week describe how often it runs.

Reference ET (ETo)

An estimate of water lost through evaporation and plant use from a standard reference surface. It describes weather-driven demand, not your crop’s final watering requirement.

Crop coefficient (Kc)

A multiplier that adjusts reference ET for the crop and growth stage. Reference ET × Kc gives estimated crop water demand.

Effective rainfall

The portion of rain retained where roots can use it, after losses such as runoff and deep drainage. It is not necessarily the amount in a rain gauge. Forecast rain is not credited by this planner.

Irrigation efficiency

The share of applied water estimated to be useful to plants. At 90% efficiency, delivering 9 useful gallons requires 10 gallons at the source.

Inches per week

Water volume expressed as an even depth over an area. One inch over one square foot is about 0.623 gallons. This does not mean water soaks only one inch into soil.

Root zone / root ball

The root zone is the soil occupied by roots. A transplant’s root ball is the small mass of roots and growing medium it arrives with; check that water reaches it.

PSI / pressure regulator

PSI measures pressure, not flow. A regulator reduces pressure to the range required by the drip hardware; its minimum flow requirement matters too.

Filter / mesh

A filter catches particles that could clog emitters. Mesh describes a screen’s fineness; use the filtration specified by your drip manufacturer.

Backflow preventer

A device intended to stop irrigation water flowing backward into the supply. Use the required device and installation arrangement for your local rules.

Bill of materials

The complete equipment and quantity list. The shopping list removes items marked as already owned; those checkboxes mean you own enough compatible equipment.