Watering - Trying To Get Ahead of the Game

[OldGuy43]

How do you decide how much water your garden needs? Last year I bought one of those little meter thing-a-ma-jigs, but that didn't work out to well. I think I ended up over-watering. I used a soaker hose so it's hard to measure.

All ideas/suggestions welcome.

 

[hoodat]

You just have to work it out for your individual garden. Soil makeup, bed conformation and the crops grown vary so much that blanket advice is all but impossible to give. My soil drains so fast that it is hard to overwater. You can flood it like a pond and in an hour or two the water has drained into the soil. The other side of the coin is that a lot of the nutrients go with it. In a heavy clay soil the problem is more likely to be over rather than underwatering. Clay soils are usually the highest in minerals but they need some help with a lot of organic matter to get air into the soil.

 

[digitS']

Hoodat has it right!

Take your shovel and check down into what is the root zone. You want to be able to squeeze the soil into a ball but a "ball of soil" should fall apart if you poke it with your finger.

Soaker hoses are difficult to figure out. I have had too large a garden to use them extensively and finally gave up on them. You could put them in a barrel and measure how much flows thru them in an hour, or X number of minutes.

Since my growing conditions are fairly arid (and often windy ), I wouldn't bother putting down less than 1/2" of water. And since, I am trying to keep the soil somewhat moist right thru the season, I shouldn't need to put down over 1". A gallon is 231 cubic inches. A square foot is 144 square inches. So, about ONE gallon per TWO square feet is about right for that 1/2" to 1" watering.

If I were to parcel water out by the gallon, it would just be a matter of measuring the output of the hose relative to the ground covered:

Steve

 

[OldGuy43]

Hoodat has it right!

Take your shovel and check down into what is the root zone. You want to be able to squeeze the soil into a ball but a "ball of soil" should fall apart if you poke it with your finger.

Soaker hoses are difficult to figure out. I have had too large a garden to use them extensively and finally gave up on them. You could put them in a barrel and measure how much flows thru them in an hour, or X number of minutes.

Since my growing conditions are fairly arid (and often windy ), I wouldn't bother putting down less than 1/2" of water. And since, I am trying to keep the soil somewhat moist right thru the season, I shouldn't need to put down over 1". A gallon is 231 cubic inches. A square foot is 144 square inches. So, about ONE gallon per TWO square feet is about right for that 1/2" to 1" watering.

If I were to parcel water out by the gallon, it would just be a matter of measuring the output of the hose relative to the ground covered:

http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h22/Digit_007/Just 4 Fun/abacus.gif

Steve

All useful info. Thanks Steve.