Liberated Gardener

Soaker Hose 101

I drove by a yard once where the gardener was opening up a brand new soaker hose and getting themselves all tangled up in it. Looked like a one-person game of Twister.  The coils had them in it's grip and they couldn't lay the thing down without snagging a leg or arm or both. 

I pulled over and offered to help them with a little advice about soaker hoses. If you look at a new soaker hose, you can see that it was tightly rolled up at the factory into a coil. So the easiest way to install it is to anchor one end with a brick or something and then unroll it onto the ground down the driveway or across the yard. Once it's unwound and laying down it looses some of its springiness and relaxes enough to be installed where you want it without it grabbing your leg like a boa constrictor.

In the pic below, you can see my right hand man Howard Dunegan unrolling a coil of new soaker hose along a trellis planted with Carolina jessamine (most people pronounce that as "jasmine", but you know we southerners have to add a few syllables).

 

The picture doesn't show it, but he is also looping the soaker hose once around each plant as he goes. Then the soaker hose and root zone are covered with 2"-3" layer of organic mulch; shredded leaves or shredded bark, etc. Don't put soaker hoses under the soil--the pores will plug up and render it useless.

Here are a few other tips for having success and saving time, water and aggravation with soaker hoses. 

1) Put a timer on the spigot--they usually cost about $14. On your way out to work, open up the spigot all the way and set the timer to an hour or two. It'll cut off on its own. You may still worry that you left the oven on (I can't help you there), but at least you can be assured that the irrigation water will turn off.  And then monitor conditions; if the soil gets soggy, dial back the time, if plants are wilting in the morning, dial the time up. Freezing weather will cause timers to crack, so bring the them in for the winter. And since they're plastic they might only last 2-3 years, but until someone makes them of metal it's the best way to save money on watering and not have to stand around waiting to turn the spigot off. 

2) Some of the soaker hoses come with a blue plastic disc with a tiny hole in it, instead of regular gasket. I throw the blue thing away and put in a regular gasket (they come in sets at a good garden center and every liberated gardener ought to keep a set handy--if you have hoses that leak, it's often an old gasket no longer doing it's job and needing to be replaced. 

3) As you're laying the hose down, use metal landscape staples to pin them in place if they want to wiggle around. The staples should be for sale near the landscape fabric. I hook a bunch of them through a belt loop on my pants at my side. That way they're handy and don't poke me if I bend over or squat down. If the soil is very loose, they hold better if they're pinned into the potting soil. 

4) To water perennials I just run the soaker hose next to the plant--over or just touching the potting soil. Water from a soaker hose is going to go straight down into the ground--it doesn't spread to the sides much at all, so you've got to get close. And since shrubs and trees need much more water, I loop the hose around them once and make sure it is placed over the root ball.

5) I try to avoid running the soaker hose uphill. I normally run the garden hose to the high part of the bed and start the soaker hose there. Since the soaker hose is leaking water as it goes, if it's running uphill too, more of the water will come out at the bottom end of the hose. If, on the other hand, the soaker hose is running downhill, then you will get more even water distribution. 

6) If the house has good water pressure, I've run as many as 6 soaker hoses in a row (or connected with one or more 'Y"s, with no loss of water pressure. If the household water pipes are old and corroded though, you might be better just running one or two hoses end to end. 

7) After about a year, a soaker hose's pores can get clogged, so they still deliver water just not as much. But if you've chosen plants well, you won't need to provide irrigation after that first year as the plants will be established and on their own. 

So good luck and don't play Twister with a soaker hose if you can help it.  :-)

Pure Water for a Thirsty Rhubarb

Keeping rhubarb happy in the south takes a bit of care. Keeping them happy through the summer let's you know you're a serious gardener. Our friends Tim and Helga have been growing a big row of rhubarb for 20 years and sell it at the farmer's market. 

Here's the trick: 

* Grow a variety called Victoria which is best adapted for the south. 

* Afternoon shade.

* Plenty of organic matter in well-drained soil. 

* Only harvest about half the stalks in spring. 

* Remove the flower stalk as soon as you see it. 

* Keep them watered through the summer. 

Which brings us to the photo below:

 

That hose comes from a dehumidifier in our otherwise slightly damp basement:
 

 

We were already running the dehumidifier to keep the basement dry, so I put it on top of a shelf so that the reservoir can drain down through a garden hose and empty out near one of our rhubarb plants. I rented a hammer-drill to create a 1" hole in the wall for the hose. I'll fill the gap with spray foam insulation. 

Occasionally I'll let the hose drain into a bucket so I can water some other plants. It puts about a gallon of water in the bucket in a day. 

 

So the hotter and more humid it gets, the more water the dehumidifier puts on the rhubarb--just at the time of year that the rhubarb is getting thirstier. So the pure water doesn't go to waste and we don't have to use tap water to keep the rhubarb juicy and growing. And I don't have to empty the reservoir by hand anymore! 

An alternative water source would be an air conditioner. The water that drains out can be fed through a hose to your rhubarb (or other thirsty plants). Our AC is downhill from the rhubarb so that won't work for us. Maybe we can work something out with our downhill neighbors...

Water Timer Saves Both

Summertime heat makes me incredibly thirsty--I'm always making sure I have a bottle of water with me when I leave the house. Plants get thirsty too, but a lack of mobility and opposable thumbs means that they look to us to open the tap. 

I'm not telling you anything new to say that one of the most demanding chores in gardening is keeping new plants, containers and annuals watered in summer. Perennial plants, shrubs and trees that are well placed can survive dry spells and droughts. But containers can easily get too dry, annuals have shallow roots and new plants have roots in too small an area to be able to get through a dry spell without help from us hominids. 

I believe it helps to think of plants as being similar to cold-blooded animals. Meaning that as the temperature gets higher, their metabolism goes faster, so they suck up more water from the ground. But as the temperature gets past the mid-80's some plants' leaves are transpiring water at a faster rate than the roots can suck it up. That's why some plants wilt in the afternoon even if there's water in the ground. An afternoon wilt is often just a momentary condition that passes overnight as the roots finally catch up on supplying water. If plants aren't showing signs of wilt in the morning, they are probably fine. 

The thing to watch for is wilting leaves in the morning. I teach my helpers to recognize that as akin to hearing a baby cry. Which means it's time to put down what you're doing and see what the baby needs. Or in the case of a wilting plant, to get the watering can and do the equivalent of spoon-feeding. 

If you're going to water on a larger scale--with a sprinkler or drip line or soaker hose, then you'll want to use one of the best time and money savers available to a gardener. The inexpensive ($10-$15) plastic water time in the photo below slashes the amount of time spent on watering and if you've had the bad habit of leaving the water running too long or forgetting to turn it off,then it will save you some money too (and conserve water). 

Also in the photo: a brass elbow that makes it easier to attach hoses to the spigot and a large "Y" valve that lets me have a hose for hand watering of containers and another hose with the timer that leads to a soaker hose. 

 

The timer is a simple device, like an egg timer. You simply attach it to the spigot and attach your hose to the timer. Set the timer, turn the spigot on all the way and go off to work. The timer will turn off the water while you're busy doing something else. 

You might leave the house and wonder if you've turned the oven off, but at least you can be sure that the water won't still be running when you get back from work. 

With our water pressure and with nearby trees sucking up a lot of the water, I normally set the timer on the full two hours, unless I see lots of excess water running off the surface.

One caveat: don't leave these timers outside in the winter. Even a little bit of water inside them will freeze and crack the plastic. You'll know that's happened when you turn it on in the spring for the first time and get the shower that you meant for the plants to have.