Snaking around your precious vegetable and flower plants, a soaker hose can become your garden’s best friend. It can eliminate the time-consuming task of watering with a garden hose, mitigate evaporative water loss through an overhead sprinkler system and prevent potential diseases from attacking your plants.
Siting a Soaker Hose
Soaker hoses shine in flower beds, vegetable gardens, islands and around trees. They are helpful in conventional row-style vegetable gardens, running the length of the spaces between the planted rows. Soaker hoses can also be acceptable for raised beds, in which their flexible shape conforms to the different sizes and shapes of the beds. Regardless of the shape of the irrigated area, soaker hoses must be laid on flat ground for constant saturation. Coil a soaker hose across a tree, with the closest section three or more feet from the trunk and the furthest section 3 feet beyond the drip line.
Spacing and Sizing
Space soaker hoses close enough together so the place you are watering doesn’t have dry patches. In row plantings, put each hose 12 inches in the next hose. Keep the hoses at least a few inches from the base of plants. Even though soaker hoses usually arrive in 25-, 50- and 75-foot lengths, the short 25-foot hose helps ensure constant water saturation. Otherwise, the plants at the terminal ends of longer seams will not get as much moisture as those closest to the water resource.
Delivering the Water
To minimize water loss in the spigot into the area that you want to irrigate, attach a soaker hose into a length of garden hose that is connected to a faucet. It is important to set up a backflow preventer on the faucet so that dirt cannot back up and soften your drinking water source. You can also attach a timer that automatically turns the water off and on, although you’ll have to adjust this through times of rain. Turn the faucet on so the water weeps throughout the soaker hose — only one-quarter to one-half turn instead of all the way open.
Tracking Its Performance
At times, filth, calcium deposits and other debris can clog the pores of a soaker hose, especially if a well is the source of water. If the hose is buried under mulch, your first hint that something’s awry might be wilted plants. Periodically, pull the mulch to make sure water is weeping uniformly along the length of a soaker hose. Calibrate your soaker hose by turning the water and allowing it to run for 15 minutes. The next day, dig down to find the thickness of soil that is moist. One inch of water, which is usually the weekly recommendation for plants, need to saturate the soil to a depth of 10 to 12 inches. Adjust the length of time you let the soaker hose weep to identical this measurement.