Ah, summertime, when the living is easy – unless you’re a vegetable gardener with a dry spell on your hands. When hot, dry weather strikes, all you can think about is keeping your plants from going thirsty.
It’s tempting to set up a sprinkler, but about half of water delivered by sprinklers is lost to evaporation, and plants are prone to diseases that spread on damp leaf surfaces. Watering by hand is time consuming, especially when soil is so dry that it resists taking up water.
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Wetting patterns of surface water and trickle irrigation in fertile garden soil
Enter drip irrigation, also called trickle irrigation, which can be as simple as placing leaky jugs or buckets among parched plants. Whether you are using soaker hoses, drip tapes, bottles, buckets or bags, trickle irrigation gives you tight control over where the water goes, foliage stays dry even when you water late in the day or at night, and you can water in wind or blazing sun.
But there’s more. When water slowly drips into the soil over a period of hours, gravity and capillary action move it down much deeper than when water is applied at the surface, or when it rains. The vertical wetting pattern that results from trickle irrigation is especially beneficial to deep-rooted vegetables including artichokes, melons, lima beans (butter beans), parsnips, pumpkins, winter squash, large indeterminate tomatoes, and watermelon.
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Soaker hoses and inexpensive and easy to use for larger areas
Soaker Hoses and Drip Tape
Gardens that are laid out in rows or are comprised of large planters or closely spaced containers are good candidates for soaker hoses or drip tape, which seep water along their length. Soaker hoses are cheap and easy to use, especially if you work with them on a warm day, because heat makes them more pliable. Plastic irrigation tape or tubing is a bit more complicated to set up and may be prone to clogging unless the lines are purged often. When installing soaker hoses, drip tape, or emitter systems, the trick is to adjust pressure as needed to make sure water is pushed to the end of the line.
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For more precise deep watering of tomatoes, this drip irrigation jug has holes only on one side
Reusing Plastic Bottles For Trickle Irrigation
Drip tape and soaker hoses may be cheap, but free is better! I have two rectangular beds planted with widely spaced peppers, for which large plastic drip irrigation bottles are the perfect method for deep watering. Using a small nail, I make tiny weepholes on the sides of a bottle, about a finger’s width up from the bottom. That way, the almost-empty bottle will still hold enough water to anchor it in place. In very windy locations, gardeners add small stones to drip irrigation bottles to keep them from blowing about.
As long as plants are well hydrated, you can use drip bottles to deliver booster feedings of liquid fertilisers. Should the holes clog up, simply rinse out the jugs with a hose. Clogging is the biggest reason not to bury drip irrigation bottles, especially in tight clay soil. Besides, letting water drip from a bottle on the surface works really well!
I love finding re-uses for my own plastic containers, and I sometimes pinch bottles I need from the community recycling bin. The trash bins at laundromats are overflowing with potential drip irrigation bottles, and restaurants often discard food-quality plastic pails. Modern society is knee deep in reusable plastics. Why buy more?
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Attached to a tall tomatillo’s support cage, a leaky bag drips water to the soil below
Irrigation Bags and Buckets for Hard-to-Reach Roots
True fact: in the US, a major retailer is selling IV bags for watering plants, outfitted with drip lines to stick into the soil. I find the drip lines a bit silly, because water always knowns where to go. Down. That said, when I needed a way to drip water to my giant tomatillos, and there was no room on the ground for bottles, I repurposed a plastic bladder from a box of wine as a drip bag. One pinhole trickle and two litres and two hours later, the tomatillos breathed a sigh of relief.
One also can spend a pretty penny on drip irrigation bladders for newly planted trees. These are probably not as good as leaky bottles or buckets, which can be moved around the plant to provide water to different sides. Most of a tree’s new roots grow a short distance from the main trunk, so being able to move drip irrigation bottles or buckets is a major benefit.
For more smart watering tips, see Ben’s video on avoiding beginner mistakes. And when the next drought comes, start dripping.
