Good watering is all-important to a good garden, and long, slow watering has many benefits.
A soaker hose might seem like the ideal way to accomplish this watering. You lay the porous rubber hose on top of the ground or bury it a few inches, turn on the faucet and let water weep out.
But much can happen ‘twixt your faucet and the ground.
Soaker hoses are easy to use but their actual ooze rate is variable. It can differ significantly from the stated rate, and it can drop dramatically after the hose has been buried in the ground even one season.
Is your garden hilly? If it is, lower areas are going to get more water than higher ones. Even on flat ground, plants near the beginning of the line are going to get more water than plants near the end. Then there are leaks.
Rubber hoses are, admittedly, an improvement over those old-time canvas soaker hoses, which you couldn’t snake around plants and which were even more variable in output.
A good alternative to soaker hoses is drip irrigation, which delivers water to your garden with tubes that have drip holes, or emitters, spaced along their length. The system can sit on the ground or be buried.
The emitters where water exits are engineering marvels that maintain relatively consistent water output in spite of changes in water pressure or elevation.
They also are engineered to avoid problems with clogging or with roots growing into the tubes. The whole system works at low pressure, putting little strain on wells and allowing the use of inexpensive tubing and fittings.
Drip irrigation tubes and soaker hoses both have advantages over sprinklers. Less water is lost to evaporation and the slow output more closely matches plant use. Both systems are easily automated with an inexpensive timer.
Automation is good because this type of watering works best when plants are watered frequently. After all, plants absorb water throughout most days.
The cost of a system depends on the size of the garden and whether you want top-of-the-line components. The cheapest way is to hook up a soaker hose without automation. This would probably run less than $50. A basic drip-irrigation system might cost up to $100, including a timer – but this is the most water-efficient option.
