I spot water like you did with your tomatoes, but I use 2 litter plastic bottles with little pin holes. Sort of like a pop up drip irogation system. The water goes very deep. I dont have the back or patients to slowly hand water. They aren't pretty but they're a life saver!
We did a drip system this year and it has made gardening so much easier. We also laid down a grass barrier and tanbark between beds and it is so nice. No more pulling weeds (except a couple sprouts here and there). My plants are so happy.
Thanks for teaching us about the Rhizosphere. Great lesson. That must be why mulching is so important, it helps protect that zone from being baked to death.
Thank you for going into detail about the water temperature affecting the roots. I live in the same zone as you & I water after the sun sets for deep watering. Early morning if the crop needs a bit more. I have found that watering during high heat, you lose through evaporation. Also, if you water the leaves when the sun is hot, you can burn the leaves (depending upon the plant, I guess)
I always allow the boiling hot water to flow out of the hose before I actually begin to water. I let it flow into a barrel and buckets. If I need to bath the dogs i add a little cool water and i have warm water for them. Or i leave it sit to cool down and in a few days it has cooled and use my watering cans and dunk them into the barrel. I'm not on water rations, but why waste it.
I do the same thing. Another method I found that works is to aim the hose into the air so the droplets cool off by the time they reach the ground. The one drawback is that a lot of plants shouldn't be watered from above.
I thought I was the only one who did this, I’m glad to see that others do this too! My watering hose bakes in the sun all day, and when I go to water my plants in the late afternoon/early evening, the water that first comes out of the hose is boiling hot. I let that really hot water drain through before watering, until I feel cool water coming out of the hose. It works great.
I've mulched pretty heavily this year and put in soaker hoses. If my faucet didn't leak so bad I'd add a timer so I could water in the morning, but I have to work with what I've got. We're in triple digits this week so I've been keeping a close eye on everything, but so far so good!
Kind of a sub category, but putting down seed free straw will also help avoid soil splash, keep the soil cooler, and cut down on a lot (not all) weeds. :)
This year has come with great challenges with my gardens 😢 these tips are new to me and i cant wait to try them. Luke i have to ask why are my peppers so tiny this year. I can fit 5 in my hand at one time 😢
It doesnt rain here in the desert. I deep water most everything every 2 days but strawberries get watered daily. I water in the mornings and sometimes at night for some crops. Its 118° past few days!
I have been so careful how I water my tomato plants; drip irrigation, trim off lower leaves, etc. Yet my neighbor, who does none of that, has far healthier looking plants than I do with 4x the tomatoes. Am I just trying too hard?
I don’t butcher tomato plants. That is for people in long growing areas and a lot of time. I had done that pruning a few years ago and the plants suffered and dried up. Also if they are determinate they shouldn’t be pruned. I have way too many to do all that work. We have short growing season and I need all the tomatoes I can get started right away, not in sections.
@@lesliealvarez2967 the end of a watering wand or watering can has a diffuser (head with holes). DRAM is a brand of professional grade one. Virtually all greenhouses would use a dram.
Not a techniques but a tip: check the temperature of the water before spraying the plants by letting the hose drain for a bit. My hose sits outside on the sun all day, with the nozzle on, and that water that stays in the hose can get extremely hot. I have killed seedlings like that. Another tip is: look at plants foliage. In most, it’s shaped to direct rain water away from the trunk. That is the area were the “air roots” are mostly located. So, i always concentrate most of the watering away from the trunk of the plant. And if the plant was transplanted, its even more important to water away from the trunk to promote the roots speading out.
We fertigate our raised bed garden (118 sf) with our duck pond that gravity feeds the garden. I created it out of a 300 gallon polyurethane watering trough and it's about 10 feet above the garden on a hillside.
I learned something new! Question- You spoke about the harmful nature of municipal water for beneficial soil organisms in a previous video, so would it be helpful to install a garden hose filter to remove chlorine, etc? Thanks!
I love it! I run irrigation on my garden and I water every 4 days for an hour. It waters deep and has plenty of time to dry out. Automated, regular and constant watering has been the most beneficial practice I have adapted.
I can’t agree more! I just did DIY irrigation and a second garden to go. I should have done it Way Sooner! Ugh, the hose! We are in extreme drought and heat moving in and will finish installing tomorrow. I can now finally water deeply as I didn’t have time before and you can’t rush a deep water. It’s has already saved me more than time.
In the drought, I have only used a watering can. Spot watering only at the base of the plants. I use my fingers and dig down to see where the water is actually needed. Thanks to mulching my water consumption has been under that of my neighbors with smaller gardens than mine. I also soak the dirt if I know there's going to be rain to avoid the water running straight off.
Great info I live in northern Mi. and my well water is quite alkaline(8-9ph). I have 3 - 55 gallon water barrels that I fill with the hose. I then correct the Ph with Ph down to the specific needs of my plants. Most plants get neutral (6ph) but I mix one barrel to 4.5 - 5.5ph for potatoes, strawberries, blueberries and other acid loving plants. The water straight out of the hose is usually too cold, So, I mix my water in the morning and water several hours later in the evening. Having the right ph really helps your plants grow big.
Spot watering, I didn't know it had a name, I wondered why my tomato beds had ZERO weeds this year! And such healthy tomato plants! Thanks Luke. You taught me everything I know about single stem and staking method!
I use 5 gallon buckets full of holes for deep watering. I have a natural stream running alongside my raised garden beds so I use another bucket to dip water and dump water into about 6 1/2-buried buckets. Saves time too.
GOOD INFO LUKE. QUESTION: Do you water with chlorinated water? I am truly thinking unless you are making microbial amendments it's really not an issue like some say it is.
I haven't had to water my garden too often because we've had so much rain. When I do water, I use a combination of spot and deep watering. I water my containers more often. My question for both is, how do you know when the product you are using has been used up? I use a watering can to fertilize because I am afraid of under-treating the garden with a hose-end sprayer. I like the Easy Flow you use. How is it different from a hose-end sprayer?
“It’ll usually rain by the 2 week mark anyway” (paraphrased) Me: lives somewhere that it hasn’t rained in over a month 😔 I feel like I have to water every other day because everything looks so dry
I recently saw some tools that you place into the ground and it waters down deep. Do you have any thoughts on those? They were like $8 for a single thing. I have thought about making something similar because I think that price was ridiculous.
Ty! I had carrots poking out the soil so I pulled one bunch and they were really fat on top and then skinny and ugly on the bottom. Lol. Maybe I need more deep waterings. Should carrots go till the fall even if the top portion is coming out the soil?
I have to water differently with my clay and when i can get outside. Not everyone has the ability, physically or due to schedule, to get outside early in the am. I buried poked coke cans last year and that helped. Didn't do it this year.
I once visited a local farm. The area where the farmer had his garden was not huge. Most of the property was being grazed by sheep or cattle. The farmer used a watering technique which he called flood irrigation. What he does is to put the hose in the area that he wants to water and turns the water on. I didn't ask him how long he leaves the water running; but, it is enough that his garden gets standing water on it. Like it has been flooded. Then he turns the water off. We live in a very dry area of Washington. I'm not sure if it would be possible to overwater. The native soil is not the best quality. Gardeners have to amend their garden beds. I garden at the community garden and have two beds. I call them tabletop beds. They will dry out faster than in ground or raised bed gardens built on the ground. With my beds, the air circulates above and below the beds. I water three days a week.
In the high desert we have the best results growing in pits or swales, so we just flood them! We haul our water so it makes it easier in that way also :)
When using a soaker hose do you put it directly on the root base or close to it? I have my hose right next to the root base . And is that a good position? I was wondering is that a good idea in preventing mold and fungus?
I take juice bottles and bury them most of the way in between the plants after poking some holes in the bottoms and sides. I then can fill up the bottles with water to get the water down deep without waste or watering weeds.
Great info. What I dont do enough of is planning and anticipating the weather. So I often put the sprinkler on as everything is dry, and actually waste a lot of water this way, and dont necessarily take care of plant needs properly. That being said, our biggest problem at the moment is rain. Hasnt let off since January, with a lot of waste of heat loving plants which just rotted, such as tomatoes, cucumbers etc. I mulched some capsicums in containers with plastic (which I dont usually like doing), and they did well as I watered them as needed. Next summer coming will possibly be dry again, so you tips will keep me on track hopefully.
I'm using large watering troughs for raised beds with 1-2 drain holes about 4-6" below the soil line. Allows for plenty of depth for water retention so watering (typically) doesn't have to be frequent even with long hot & dry stretches, and roots have a lot of room to spread out. Last year's basil plants had roots 2-3' long and thrived.
Thanks Luke, I never considered the heat transfer going into the soil when watering on hot days. Luckily most of my beds are drip watered in the summer so never had a big issue, but it's always good to know these things. 👍
I have also been experimenting with the Olla watering method in my containers. Because we've had so much rain, it has been hard to tell how well they worked.
This season, I put 30 extra seed potatoes I had into a 20 gallon recycling bin. Since there are so many plants competing for water, should I be watering everyday? I find that during hot and sunny periods, if I don't water once every 6 hours, the leaves get very soft and the stalks fall over. With enough water, they stay firm and leathery.
Some good points with some tweaking. If you use mulch the soil won’t be hot and always run your water til it cools before watering plants. I’m surprised you don’t use mulch. Then the issue of location, climate and soil. I have extreme micro climate, drought and sandy soil. There is no way plants would survive with watering once a week no matter how deep. The watering has been too time consuming and this year I am learning irrigation installation. I have to say I’m still observing the timing and spread of water. I have emitters that are 1 and 2 GPH and tubing with emitters 6, 12 and 18” apart and those are .5 GPH. I’ve observed after an hour that it spread maybe a 6” radius. On the second garden I will use 6 and 12” emitters for better coverage as the previous area has larger plants. I will have to say if a single dripper is used in my soil it does not cover around the plant and would actually train the roots to one area and therefore I may switch single emitters to 6” emitters in a hoop around orchard plants. I do fully agree to deep water and it’s nearly impossible in a drought and large gardens to drag a 200’+ hose around for hours. I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am with irrigation. I’m glad I put shut off valves in for squash and melons as those 6” emitters work very well. It’s going to save my plants, time, energy, water, money and I will Finally have time to do other gardening.
First off I really love your videos. They are so informative and helpful. As far as watering while I was watching this video it hit me that I could use a battery operated pump to pump dissolve fertilizer from a 5 gallon bucket into my garden. I was ordering one of these battery-operated pumps to take gas out of my 5-gallon cans cuz I can't lift them, and then I thought boy this would be a great way and easier way to fertilize the garden cuz it takes me so long and I spot water. Hope this idea help somebody
I plan to Put an RV in line water filter on the hose for my city water. I read about the contaminants and am concerned about microbiological health of the soil and damage from chlorine, etc.
We are putting in rain barrels but we don't know how to get the water to the raised beds. I thought of drip irrigation but I wonder if you have other ideas. I live just North of Seattle in Canada so we have very much the same weather as Seattle.
We hand water out of tanks and use a sump pump attached to a hose. You could siphon it out, but it’s slow. I seen comments about using pails with holes set next to plants and you could fill those or Ollas.
