Garden Watering Made Easy
Each Spring, we prepared our garden, fenced it in, and put down the soaker hose. In the past we connected it to a garden hose which we connected to the outside faucet of the house. Every week I had to roll up the garden hose before mowing, as I did not want to slice it up with the mower blades. After the lawns were mowed, I had to put everything back. This was tedious work and we wanted to avoid it. We came up with a simple, but very effective solution.
Each Spring, we prepared our garden, fenced it in, and put down the soaker hose. In the past we connected it to a garden hose which we connected to the outside faucet of the house. Every week I had to roll up the garden hose before mowing, as I did not want to slice it up with the mower blades. After the lawns were mowed, I had to put everything back. This was tedious work and we wanted to avoid it. We came up with a simple, but very effective solution.
In the garden shed of the former owner we found a small hand plow with which we could easily lift aside a 2-3 inch top layer of the lawn. It peeled the turf over to one side leaving it attached on one side next to the furrow (you can use a spade), which we ran from the house faucet to the garden; we put a ½ inch black plastic flexible pipe into this furrow, and folded and pressed the turf back over the pipe and watered it in. After two weeks, the grass roots had knitted back together and it was invisible. We put our pipe in 20 years ago and have never replaced it. We do drain it each Fall, but even when we have forgotten, it has never burst from freezing as the black plastic pipe will swell with the freezing water. Caution- the fixtures will not, but done correctly it will only be each end’s fixtures that need to be free of water.
We connected the black pipe ends using garden hose repair pieces with a Siamese connection to the house faucet on one end and to a valve at the garden. Inside the garden fence we installed a valve to which we could attach the soaker hose. Now when our garden needs watering, we just open the faucet at the house and set a timer. When the alarm tells us to stop the watering, we close the faucet.
Our garden is situated 20 yards away from the house and about 10 feet uphill. In the Fall, when we disassemble our garden, the uphill location works well for us. We disconnect the hose from the Siamese connection and leave it open to drain the water out. Thus we avoid a frozen pipe.
No rolling up gardening hoses or even worse putting a hole in them: That is watering made easy!
No rolling up gardening hoses or even worse putting a hole in them: That is watering made easy!