|
Post by daylilydude on Feb 10, 2018 6:16:57 GMT -5
When you water the garden, do you use water right from the spigot, well water, drip hose, sprinklers or by hand one at a time ... give us some details on how you water?
|
|
|
Post by ahntjudy on Feb 10, 2018 8:21:40 GMT -5
Good Morning everybody! Happy Weekend! I have soaker hoses snaked throughout my fenced in veggie garden... I used to take them up every year for winter and put them back again in the spring..I even made a drawing of how I have them placed as they fit perfectly and it was a pain to get them back in 'proper' place again... Then I guess I got lazy and I've just left them there...so far so good...and it's been a bunch of years...with no inevitable blowouts... I keep the garden under a good deal of leaf mulch/hay/straw all year 'round so that helps I'm sure... Big flower pots get hand watered right from the hose...(not well water)... I need to get a rain barrel going...why haven't I done that yet...sheesh?? I have to look through the site here to get ideas about everyone's rain barrel systems... Maybe that could be another question of the day...
|
|
|
Post by hairymooseknuckles on Feb 10, 2018 8:35:02 GMT -5
Right from the faucet. Water enough to get them going then they are own their own unless it's a really dry season. I'm not a daily watering type of person.
|
|
|
Post by ahntjudy on Feb 10, 2018 8:39:05 GMT -5
hairymooseknuckles ... That got me thinkin'...Last year, I think I only used the soakers maybe twice or three times all season...but they're there just in case of super drought... That thick layer of mulch makes all the difference in the world...Without that mulch, up goes the water bill...
|
|
|
Post by octave1 on Feb 10, 2018 9:18:25 GMT -5
I run soaker hoses when needed. They sit on garden beds buried in mulch. I do it usually at night, I turn the water on and let it go for several hours. Very low and slow water flow.
|
|
|
Post by ladymarmalade on Feb 10, 2018 9:25:45 GMT -5
I have a big sprinkler that DH brought home from work for me. It stands six feet tall and gives a spray that covers the whole garden- I love it! Hook it up to the hose, turn it on, and an hour later everything is gently watered all at once.
The community garden has spigots with hoses attached, but we need to bring our own watering cans or nozzles. I picked up a wand that attaches to the hose and that works nicely for getting that plot watered.
|
|
|
Post by spike on Feb 10, 2018 10:08:01 GMT -5
I water when it is hot and dry and the plants look like they are thirsty. I fill my water cans with the rain water I have collected. If by some slim chance I run out of rain water, we have a well and I have hundreds of feet of hose and wand to water with.
|
|
|
Post by paulf on Feb 10, 2018 10:22:29 GMT -5
Smaller tomato and pepper seedlings get watered by hand if it gets pretty dry. Like others, a good mulching program reduces the need to water. I always tell people to use a soaker hose watering system and water the plants at the base for best results. Don't water overhead if you can help it. So, if it gets dry my garden gets watered by an overhead sprinkler. I know, do as I say not as... We use water from the outdoor faucets and our city water is untreated, raw water.
|
|
|
Post by september on Feb 10, 2018 10:26:39 GMT -5
I water by hand with an adjustable stream sprinkler head on a long wand, it even has a mist setting for delicate seedlings. We have hand numbing cold well water right out of the ground, so in the early summer I have tubs of warming water set around the garden that I try to use for bucket watering newly planted tomato and pepper starts until they start to size up and the ground temperature can retain more surface heat.
We also have a lot of iron and minerals in our well water, so using an automatic system with small drip emitters would get clogged in no time. I spend way more time than I would like standing around watering, but on the up side, I get a close up look at how things are growing and can nip problems in the bud.
|
|
|
Post by farmerjack41 on Feb 10, 2018 11:40:35 GMT -5
Living in an area that only gets about eight inches of rain per year, I do a lot of irrigating. The garden and flowers are mostly done with drip line, the lawn with in ground sprinklers. If am going to be gone for a week, the garden gets watered with over head sprinklers, don't trust drip lines when away. Might develop a big leak and cause damage everywhere.
|
|
|
Post by pepperhead212 on Feb 10, 2018 12:25:57 GMT -5
About 95% of my watering is done by drip lines, all on timers - 9 different timer lines. All of the SIPs have the reservoirs filled with a drip line, which, early on, doesn't take as much, sometimes every 3 days, but as the plants get large, the timer has to be re-set to twice a day.
Plants that are close together, like greens and herbs, I water with T-tape, which is more like using soaker hose.
|
|
|
Post by daylilydude on Feb 11, 2018 5:24:48 GMT -5
I'm gonna bump this one up as I forgot part of the question... when watering your garden it says to water it early so it has time to dry, but sometimes some of us aren't able with morning watering... when do you water?
|
|
|
Post by ahntjudy on Feb 11, 2018 8:12:25 GMT -5
If things need watering...usually and mostly the potted things, I water early in the day...and low to the soil...I try not to get leaves/plants wet... The big pots stay damp fairly long due to mulching the pots...
|
|
|
Post by september on Feb 11, 2018 10:43:07 GMT -5
I prefer mornings or late afternoons, but will water whenever if necessary. I try to avoid wetting tomato and beans leaves, but peppers and lettuce and most other plants get a good dousing to freshen them and keep aphids off.
|
|
|
Post by brownrexx on Feb 11, 2018 15:12:50 GMT -5
We have well water and do not like to use it to water plants because you never know when the well might run low. It's not an unlimited supply. We have never had trouble but still...... So we bought a food grade plastic 330 gallon tote and made a rain barrel which will be full when we get only 1/4" of rain. It has a white overflow pipe which drains into the yard and at the bottom of the tote there is a hose connection. It is behind that group of lilies so you can't see it. My garden is about 100' away and slightly downhill so we bought a 100" hose and ran it along the surface of the ground to the garden. Within 1 year the grass had grown over it and now you can't even see the hose and we can mow right over that area. At the garden, I have a hose hangar and another hose that attaches to the underground one and this one has a brass nozzle on the end. I can water my plants by hand or even wash my hands right at the garden and the hose just fills and flows by gravity. I don't get a real strong stream of water but it's pretty decent and it's great to have free rainwater at my garden and I don't have to carry it. I just bring the second hose indoors for the winter and drain the rain barrel and the underground hose. I usually water my plants late in the day after the intense heat of the day has passed but I don't wet the leaves. DSC00860 by Brownrexx, on Flickr
|
|