I was able to set up hoses in the three beds with tomatoes in them.
The black soaker hose is definitely the one I prefer to use. It does take longer, and directly waters only the soil directly below it, rather than the plants beside it, but if left running long enough, it allows for a gentle, deep watering.
As for the sprinkler hoses… they’ll do for now!
One of them – the one in the bed with the turnips – is a new dollar store purchase. The spray zone is larger than I expected, and I had to fuss with it so that the hose was on its side and spraying into the bed, instead of watering the grass in the paths! The connector does not rotate freely, though, making it difficult to attach the garden hose without twisting the sprinkler hose. I wouldn’t expect much out of a dollar store hose. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the end of the hose, which is just heat sealed, gives out. 😄
The other sprinkler hose is one of two I found while cleaning up around a junk pile in the yard. I have no idea how old they were, but one of them ended up cracking and had to be tossed, last year. This one has much tinier holes than the dollar store one, so the spray is gentler, but it seems like a lot of them are blocked or partially blocked. The holes were also so small, I couldn’t tell which side of the hose was “up”. Once I had that figured out, I set it to spray inwards as well, and ended up having to use bricks to hold it in place, as it is far less flexible. Later on, I’ll dig out the ground staples I picked up awhile back, and use those to hold the sprinkler hoses in position, and also keep them from flipping on top of the onions!
I keep hearing that tomatoes should never be watered from above, because if the leaves get wet, they’ll get diseased. Not sure how they survive being rained on, if that’s true, but I try to avoid it if I can. With the setup I have now, the sprinkler hoses are still getting the leaves wet. Just from below, instead of from above! Still, it’s a lot gentler than using the spray nozzle on the hose, and while it will take longer to water the beds and it will mean moving the garden hose from bed to bed, it should be more efficient to water them this way. Plus, I can just hook up the hose and move on to other work until it’s time to move the hose to another bed.
When we convert these beds to high raised beds, I want to think about different watering systems to set up. Since we plan to fill the high raised beds hügelkultur style, they shouldn’t need a lot of watering, but some things just need more water than others.
I’m just looking at the forecast for the next week.
*sigh*
Why is it that the one day it’s not expected to be insanely hot, it’s also the day I will be driving my mother around, and won’t be able to do much work outside?
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 