Getting Started--(continued)
Watering--Watering your garden seems simple enough. Fundamentally, watering involves getting water from a source and putting it around your plants. I run a hose from the pump house faucet to the greenhouse and use a watering wand to water the plants still in pots. When I'm done with that, I connect it to another hose that runs to the garden.
I've been going through about two watering wands a year. I prefer the long ones, so I can reach to water plants at the back of the rack, but I've been very unsatisfied, because they just don't last. The weakness is in the threaded plastic collars. They break or split easily. I bought the short one above at Dollar General, and while it isn't very long, all of the connections are solid and permanent. The complete lack of threaded points will undoubtedly mean a longer lasting sprayer.
This sprayer has all of the usual spray patterns, so length is really all I'm sacrificing.
Top watering is not recommended for many plants, such as tomatoes, squash and cucumbers. Wetting the leaves makes them more susceptible to wilt and other fungal diseases. If I have to hand water, I water these plants individually around the bottom. Drip irrigation is my preference.
I have three drip hoses, two 25 feet long and one 50 feet long. I connect them end to end, after removing the little flow restriction washers from the last two in line. Flow restriction is important to prevent too much pressure from building up and splitting the hoses, but with all three washers in place, the last hose in line doesn't receive enough water.
After transplanting my tomatoes and cucumbers, I started running my hoses. They had a tendency to twist, or I would pull too far, and drag loops of hose over my fragile transplants. My tomato rows run north and south and my cucumbers run east and west, with the first hose along the cucumbers. I discovered I could loop the tomato hoses through the cucumber hose at the end of each row to prevent movement. It works great, although my tomatoes are big enough to fend for themselves now.
This sprayer has all of the usual spray patterns, so length is really all I'm sacrificing.
Top watering is not recommended for many plants, such as tomatoes, squash and cucumbers. Wetting the leaves makes them more susceptible to wilt and other fungal diseases. If I have to hand water, I water these plants individually around the bottom. Drip irrigation is my preference.
I have three drip hoses, two 25 feet long and one 50 feet long. I connect them end to end, after removing the little flow restriction washers from the last two in line. Flow restriction is important to prevent too much pressure from building up and splitting the hoses, but with all three washers in place, the last hose in line doesn't receive enough water.
After transplanting my tomatoes and cucumbers, I started running my hoses. They had a tendency to twist, or I would pull too far, and drag loops of hose over my fragile transplants. My tomato rows run north and south and my cucumbers run east and west, with the first hose along the cucumbers. I discovered I could loop the tomato hoses through the cucumber hose at the end of each row to prevent movement. It works great, although my tomatoes are big enough to fend for themselves now.
I hope to pick up some more drip hoses on clearance at the end of the season, but for now, I usually hand water the half of the garden planted with potatoes, onions and peppers. During the winter, we were in such a drought, that I kept my garden watered regularly. For that task, I used the sprinkler above. It works much better than the ones on a spike, because it doesn't wobble and move. Recently, I've had to use it a couple of times to catch up when I got behind on watering. Sprinklers waste a lot of water on areas that don't need the water.
Most garden plants need the equivalent of one inch to one and a half inches of rain a week. Some companies that make rain gauges also make sprinkler gauges, a one inch version of a rain gauge, that sticks into the ground. These can be put in various places around the garden to measure water from a sprinkler, or placed under a drip hose.
For the most part, over watering garden soil, is not an issue if you have good drainage. I have lost a few transplants to areas that were clearly staying too wet, but that's unusual.
My pH meter is also a soil moisture meter. It is calibrated A, B, C, D, from dry to wet. The back of the package the meter came in has suggestions as to what plants prefer to be in which range. There are very few vegetables listed, but that's okay. An hour or two after watering, I would want tests at two, four and six inches to be in the D part of the scale. Two days later, I would want the test for two and four inches in the C part of the scale. Any area that still measures D probably isn't draining properly, or is simply retaining water better than other soil. For those areas, I'm careful not to water until they really need it.
When planting seeds directly into the soil, it's important to keep the top two inches well watered, or the seeds may germinate and die, if they germinate at all. Because my soil is extremely sandy, I have to water the seeded areas daily.
Currently, I only water once a week, but I will likely need to increase to twice a week as the hot summer drags on. Right now the daily highs are staying in the low to mid 90s and my plants are thriving. I, on the other hand, tend to wilt after an hour in the garden.
Stephen
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