PSA: Check the greenhouse drip line before July, not after

Stopped by the city botanical garden's tropical house last weekend and noticed two of the big philodendrons had brown leaf tips. Asked a volunteer and she said the drip emitters had clogged back in March, nobody caught it until June. I went home and checked my own 12-emitter setup, 3 were completely blocked with mineral buildup. A quick soak in vinegar fixed them in 20 minutes. Anyone else check their irrigation lines on a set schedule, or just when the plants look sad?

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abby_chen1mo agoMost Upvoted

MARCH?! That's like THREE months of the plants slowly suffocating and nobody noticed until the leaves looked sad. The volunteers must have walked past those philodendrons a hundred times. Honestly it makes me wonder how many other things around that greenhouse are quietly failing right now. I check my drip lines every single month during the growing season, takes like ten minutes tops. Vinegar soak always does the trick for mine too, but I also give the emitters a little poke with a toothpick to loosen any gunk first. Better to catch a clogged line when it's just one plant looking off than to find out three months later that half your setup was dead the whole time.