Garden Watering Setup

Our garden is watered at 5 am while I'm still asleep.  I read online that very early morning is the best time for the plants to be watered, but there's no way I'm getting up that early.  We got a handy timer from the folks at CSN and so far it's fabulous**.  You get up early once and turn it on at the time you want it to go off, and after that it remembers what time to turn it on.  And it has lots of different options and settings for how many minutes you want to water for and how often.  Right now we're experimenting with how much water the garden needs.

From the timer we have an extra long hose that snakes around the side of the driveway.  We set it up this way so that we 1) don't run the hose over with the car (which ruined our other one) and 2) the hose won't burn the grass in the heat of the summer.  It runs along the side of the garage until it reaches the garden enclosure, where it runs through a small hole cut into the fencing and into the soaker hoses that are buried in the raised beds. We went with soaker hoses because they only water the plant's roots, reducing water waste (from evaporation and runoff) and helping to prevent leaf fungus and mold by keeping the plant leaves dry.  Sprinklers water everything and get water everywhere - good for lawns, bad for vegetables.

Yes it looks a little bit like a Frankenstein science experiment... but it's efficient!

 

**Our watering timer was provided by CSN.com, but my opinion of it is completely my own.