Gardening tips, water dripper system help, rainwater tanks and associated pump install

[Pixie]

Hi all, my other half and I have just purchased a home in Qld, 5 mins from Carseldine Bunnings.  We love our garden. Garden appeared to be under control for watering plants however after moving in we found the so called "water dripper system" is so old a lot of the sprayers are perished/broken/leaking (over grown plants hiding so many of these) and hopeless.  Plan was to use current system until we get rainwater tank installed, with pump (if we really need a pump)

**About to start looking for rainwater tanks, installation etc. Any input appreciated**. Of course we'll need rain to go with it.......any help with mother nature would be good! ( Sorry sarcasm keeps me going) 

We are currently watering garden beds with sprayer on hose.  It takes just over an hour to water by hand. 

Plus using a soaker hose, moving it 3 times to cover lawn area.  Only part of drip system working is in a small greenhouse. Thank god for something I guess. 

I've already started tackling the garden. Removing a horrible vine climbing type plant.  Had to start somewhere.

How hard is it to remove Papaya Trees from the garden beds? (See pics)  Looking at size of trunks on them they've been there a longtime. 

It's going to be a bit of a task to get this garden functional rather than it being a nightmare.  I'm dreading the first water bill we get.  Mother nature hasn't helped us on the water side of things either. It's so dry here.

I've included some picturesBegonias,overgrown,hiding papaya treeYep that’s the Papaya tree trunksStill same papaya tree.I think it’s a fairly big lawn area, follows around to front of homeOnly the roots left now, yayI’ve made a big dent in removing pesky plantOmg! There’s another Happy Plant. Trunk near fence is Happy Plant too.Love, love, love this area. Drippers inside work wellKeeping this lovely hibiscusPots down smaller side of house.You can see a bit of lawn here.Drippers don’t work this side of house either.

[Jason · Accepted solution]

Hi @Pixie,

Welcome to Workshop. We're really pleased to have you join us at this exciting time. Congratulations on the new house! We are looking forward to seeing how you put your stamp on it.

Have you seen the four-part series on installing an irrigation system from the Bunnings website? There's also a lot of great posts about watering systems on Workshop. Take a look at these previous discussions:

• Watering system

• Garden irrigation system

• Holman BTX1 watering system review

• Watering system for my backyard

Let me also tag @TheSaltyreefer for you. As you will see from the links above, he has a fantastic set-up and I'm sure would be happy to assist you if you have any specific questions.

Thanks again,

Jason

[Old-gal24]

These sites are great @Jason I put rain water tanks in here when I first moved. Now we are in the middle of what I've been told is the worst drought in history. I am so very glad I planted my gardens the way I did. On advice I was given by a local. I used brown dripper poly from Bunnings it has been amazing, the reason I know this is my garden grew in leaps and bounds and the amount of people that have complemented me on my hard work.

Now all I have to do is sort out plumbing from my tanks to the gardens. I have two older swimming pool pumps I thought I might be able to rig up. That's another day.
Cheers