How to Water Your Garden: Three Favorite Methods
There are so many ways to water your garden. Beyond that, there are tons of approaches when it comes to how long to water, how much, how often, and what about when it rains, when it’s humid, when it’s hot?
I have three of my favorite options here for watering, which give you a lot of flexibility and are easy to implement. The ultimate choices we have are:
- Drip irrigation (with or without timers)
- Sprinklers
- Hand watering (with a hose, hose head, watering can, etc.)
My all-time favorite approach is to use soaker hoses. It’s so easy to just screw them onto the hose bib, and bam, you’re done! Drip irrigation is amazing also, but we’ve had some issues with irrigation popping apart, being costly and confusing to install, and also having to do a lot of excavation to get it in place. Let’s unpack the options a bit:
Drip irrigation is the most sophisticated and long-term approach and I do recommend it – it’s just not my favorite because I like things that are mobile and easy since I change the garden layout a lot.
Soaker hoses are great for short-term solutions, easy solutions, low output by the gardener, high control, ease of use.
Sprinklers are great for large-scale watering, but I don’t like how they can flood an area, and get the plant leaves wet. A lot of garden plants don’t like wet leaves (like peppers and tomatillos).
Hand watering is great because you can really really control how much water and where. However, it’s the most labor intensive. I often do this though because I like to check all my plants and be in the garden. It’s hard to actually water deeply with this method though, so I don’t fully recommend it if you have a lot of space and water-hungry plants like tomatoes.
Top row: soaker hose / Middle row hand-watering with wand / Bottom row hand-watering with nozzle
WHERE TO START:
I recommend placing any irrigation or soaker hose in place before you plant your plants. If you feel intimidated though, and want to start with hand-watering that’s fine too.
To get an initial feel for your watering needs, start out with a rain gauge in the garden, placing it into your soil near the plants. Water as you would with your hose, and notice how long it takes for the water to collect in your gauge. For me, this is about 7 minutes a bed if I want to be watering 3x a week in the Spring.
If you’re starting with timed irrigation, three times a week in intervals of about 7-10 minutes tends to be a great starting point.
SIGNS OF TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE WATER
If you’re watering too much, the leaves can turn yellow or you can start to see some rot near the base of the plant (root rot).
If you’re watering too little, the leaves will droop/wilt and eventually turn brown and dry.
SEASONAL WATERING
Lastly, as the seasons change, so must the watering! When it rains, we turn off all irrigation. If it’s heavy, we turn it off for a week, if light, then maybe just the day. Use your discretion.
For Summer, we get brutal afternoon heat on the garden so this year I am adding mulch to keep water in, and watering deeply three times a week and shallow water twice a week (instead of my shallow 3x water).
It’s good to have a plan, but always be prepared to adjust based on your climate (humidity adds a whole layer), the weather each day, and of course, your soil.
Pictured here are three watering tools that I have and have loved testing out! The company Green Mount sent them to me and I will keep using them. This soaker hose is SO GREAT and very heavy-duty!
Soaker hose HERE
Spray Nozzle HERE
Wand HERE
Good luck watering your plants this season, if you have questions, leave a comment!