More irrigation = Less irritation
The weather has been utterly bonkers this summer, hasn’t it? It’s been so hot and so dry. I can’t remember living through a spring and summer quite like this.
By the time I decided to install a soaker hose system, I’d already lost a few plants and others were clearly struggling. I’ve also had a hip and back problem this summer, which has meant that carrying watering cans around the garden simply hasn’t been an option.
Even without that, hand-watering a garden the size of mine properly would take a couple of hours every day. I don’t have the physical capability to do that at the moment, but I don’t really have the time either.
So, I decided to try soaker hoses.
I didn’t go for a particular brand. In fact, I did almost the opposite: I bought the cheapest versions I could find. It’s a big garden, with a lot of ground to cover, and I knew from the outset that I was going to need quite a lot of hose, connectors, splitters and other bits and pieces to make the system work.
The objective wasn’t to create a sophisticated irrigation system. It was simply to find a practical and affordable way of keeping my plants alive.
Has it worked?
So far, remarkably well.
I haven’t had any outright failures, and the system is doing pretty much what I hoped it would do. I have tweaked the layout in a few places after discovering that I’d left too much space between runs of hose, resulting in some dry patches, but those have been relatively easy to fix.
One thing I was conscious of when planning the system was that the longer the run of soaker hose, the more difficult it can be to get even watering all the way to the end.
Rather than installing one enormous length of soaker hose, therefore, I divided the garden into different runs.
How I laid out the system
At the tap, I have a brass splitter. One side allows me to use an ordinary hose for filling watering cans whenever I need to, while the other feeds into my water timer.
The timer itself has two outlets.
From those, I run ordinary garden hose to the points where I actually want the soaker hoses to begin. This is important: there’s no point having a soaker hose slowly releasing water behind the garage or across a pathway where there aren’t any plants to benefit from it.
The two main outlets broadly divide the garden into its north and south sides, which also makes sense because those parts of the garden have different plants and receive different amounts of sun.
From there, I’ve used splitters to create a number of shorter watering runs rather than relying on one extremely long soaker hose.
On the south side, one run travels behind the garage before reaching a splitter. From there, a soaker hose waters the small bed, followed by a short section of ordinary hose that takes the water across the path. I’ve covered that section with wood chip so that it isn’t a trip hazard.
The hose then continues into my herb bed and on to the prairie bed.
It’s quite a long run, so at the far end, where I expected the watering to be less effective, I deliberately left some extra hose. I looped this around the final plant and doubled it back, giving that area a little more water.
Elsewhere, I’ve used the same basic principle: ordinary hose gets the water to the area that needs it, then soaker hose winds through the planting.
On the north side, the system runs through my woodland bed, with further splitters allowing me to send water towards different areas. One section runs the length of the back of the bed, while another weaves through the planting at the front.
Further along, another splitter allows me to take water around some dogwoods near the pond that have been struggling badly in the dry weather, while another length crosses a pathway, again using ordinary hose buried beneath wood chip ,and waters two trees on a bank that have really suffered this year.
There is also a particularly large, dry bed beneath a tree. Here I’ve positioned the soaker hose more closely together because I know the plants need more help, and once again I’ve doubled the hose back at the far end of the run.
It sounds complicated written down, but in reality, it’s essentially a network of ordinary hose, soaker hose and splitters. The ordinary hose transports the water; the soaker hose puts it where I actually need it.
How long do I run the soaker hose?
When I first installed the system, the ground was incredibly dry. The soil was cracked and desperately needed moisture putting back into it.
For the first two evenings, therefore, I ran the system for about three hours.
I was actually surprised by how quickly that made a difference. After those two long waterings, there seemed to be enough moisture back in the soil and those finger width cracks and miraculously disappeared, so I could begin reducing the amount of watering.
I’m now on day seven and running it for around an hour in the morning.
My plan next week, when this wave of extreme heat is over again, is to reduce that to every other day and see how the garden responds.
The splitters also have individual controls, so I can turn particular runs on or off. As I get a better idea of how much water different parts of the garden need, I should be able to water the thirstier areas while switching off sections that are doing perfectly well.
I suspect that will be an ongoing process rather than something I get exactly right from day one.
What difference has it made?
This has probably been the biggest surprise.
After the first proper watering, plants that had been looking extremely stressed, some of them genuinely teetering on the edge of death, perked up remarkably quickly.
We’ve had another heatwave this week and the garden seems much more resilient because of the water it has already received.
Nothing is wilting. Everything is still green.
Plants that had stopped flowering have started flowering again. Plants that had turned yellow through drought stress are already beginning to green up.
But there has been another effect that I hadn’t really anticipated.
I hadn’t realised quite how much baseline stress I was carrying about the garden.
Every hot day meant looking outside and wondering what was dying. Watering was becoming this enormous job that I knew needed doing but physically couldn’t keep on top of.
As soon as I had the soaker hoses installed and working, I felt as though I could breathe again.
And, perhaps most importantly, I feel able to go outside and enjoy my garden again rather than seeing it as an ever-growing list of plants that desperately need water.
Is a soaker hose water-efficient?
This was something I wanted to understand because I obviously didn’t want the solution to involve simply throwing enormous quantities of water at the garden.
The hose I’m using has a quoted flow rate of around 3 litres per hour for every metre of soaker hose, although actual water use will vary depending on things like water pressure, hose length and how the system is configured. That’s one of the reasons I’m now experimenting with reducing the frequency of watering and switching individual sections off when they don’t need it.
For me, though, the calculation was fairly straightforward. Even allowing for the cost of the water and the equipment, it felt like a very reasonable price to pay to protect a garden containing thousands of pounds' worth of plants.
There is also something inherently sensible about delivering water slowly at soil level, exactly where the plants need it, rather than spraying it across the garden.
What would I do differently?
My biggest mistake had nothing to do with the soaker hose itself. It was trying to save a little too much money on the timer.
I bought a super-cheap water timer which turned out not to function properly as a timer at all. The water would run when it was manually switched on, but the timed function didn’t work.
I had scoured the reviews before buying it, but unfortunately, I didn’t discover that particular problem until afterwards. To make matters worse, the seller hadn’t actually sent the same brand that had been advertised.
That one went back.
I’ve since done considerably more research and chosen a timer that repeatedly came up in reviews as being robust, reliable and able to survive life outdoors.
If I were designing the system again with a bigger budget, I might also consider a fancier, internet enabled, intelligent timer with more independently controlled zones. That would give me finer control over how often different parts of the garden are watered.
But I’m not convinced that I actually need that. The system I have is relatively simple, adaptable and, most importantly, it is working.
Would I recommend a soaker hose?
Definitely.
It has made looking after a large garden during an exceptionally hot, dry summer dramatically easier. The plants are looking better, the soil has moisture in it again and
I’m no longer facing hours of hand-watering every day.
But perhaps the biggest benefit has been peace of mind.
If I were starting another garden from scratch, I wouldn’t wait for a drought before thinking about irrigation. I would incorporate soaker hoses, or some form of permanent irrigation system, into the garden at the planning stage.
After this summer, I think I’d consider it part of the infrastructure of the garden rather than an optional extra.
If you're currently under hosepipe restrictions, check your own water company's rules before installing one.