How I water everything + favorite watering gear | The Impatient Gardener

hey everybody so if what's going on in your yard is anything like what's going on in my yard you are spending a lot of time doing some of this right now watering I think this is just the time of the year when gardening shifts over to a little bit of weeding and a lot of watering so watering is one of those interesting things you know one of the very first blog posts I ever wrote about was the search for a decent watering wand because I was so sick of water dripping down my arm when I lifted it up in the air and honestly the search for great watering tools still continues but I thought I'd go around and show you how I water everything not the actual putting the water on the plants part but what I use and the methods I use to get the water where it needs to go because I do get a lot of questions about watering and I don't know what you guys but I am always searching for a better way to do things so maybe you'll like some of the things that I show you and maybe you will have some suggestions to share with me for ways to improve the watering situation here so we're gonna start from simplest and we're gonna go to most complicated okay so I told you we were going to start with the simplest method well here we are at my rain barrel you hardly ever see this because it's actually kind of hard to get to which is one of the problems with it but this is off the corner of the garage we have just shortened the gutter on this one little gutter on this garage will fill up this rain barrel in minutes in a decent rainstorm so we just have shortened the gutter to come straight into here it flows right into here I do have a hose connected to it and there is a spigot this was a pretty cheap ray barrel that we picked up at one of the big-box stores and we do have it set up on a log that helps because obviously this rain barrel is gravity fed so I can run that hose and water sort of you know kind of comes out to it but it's important over here because this garden over by the garage is difficult to reach with other hoses in the yard so most of these plants are watered with this rain barrel and I will tell you there's no doubt in my mind that rain water is the best thing you can water plants with plants grow so well over here I'm convinced it's because of the rain water I mean I think if you could set up a proper rain barrel system that had either a pump or with things were set up higher so you get more gravity feed because that's the one real problem with this is that it really trickles out and I have to make sure that the end of the hose is lower than the top of the hose or else no water comes out so still I think that rain barrels and collecting rainwater is a great way to water if you can I would like to expand and improve upon this system to be honest with you it's just one of those things that we haven't gotten to but if you have a great rain barrel system I would love to hear about it because I think they're great and I think it could be improved upon quite a bit it's great for the plants and why not use the water that's falling on your roof anyway so we're talking about simple watering methods a watering can is obviously right up there I think every gardener needs a watering can I think a lot of gardeners have this specific watering can it's my favorite I've had two of these now this is the second one the first one split on me this is from gardeners supply I'm pretty sure they probably still have it it's pretty popular item there I will link to that it does come with a watering rose you know what you do with that watering hose you take that off and then you put that somewhere and you probably never look at it again honestly I can't be bothered with water and roses it takes too much time they get clogged and I like when I'm using this watering can it is about efficiency because a lot of times what I'm doing here is fertilizing with this and so if I have to fertilize all my plants two gallons at a time it's gonna take a while I also do use this for watering containers that are farther away or I don't feel like bringing out a hose to water them or something but the key here is size it's two gallons and then here's my little tip the rest of you might know this but it took me years to figure this out carry this backwards when you carry it with the spout facing backwards it doesn't shoot out all over your leg I don't know why that is it's just is so watering can this is the one I love it's nothing fancy it's plastic but it's bay and it does the job okay let's talk watering once you got to have a good watering wand everybody needs these I prefer these long ones although we have just short watering whatever you call those things heads the short version of this but I like the long one you don't have to bend over the goal when you're watering is to get the water at the roots of your plant not on the leaves of your plant so this way you can water plants or lower to the ground without bending over this is a dram I really like the DRAM ones they just seem to work really well they come in a bunch of colors I have tried a number of different DRAM ones including ones with different water breakers on them and professional series and the whole thing honestly I don't find a ton of difference between them but I do like this right here this is the this is just the lover to turn it off and on you don't have to hold it on so I do like this I think they call this a thumb control and this is the latest one I got which I like because you don't often find this on the water wands it's got all the different selections for how you'd like your water to come out so I am a fan of that even though I mostly just use the rain in the shower and sometimes the stream but I still like all the options so watering wands this is my pick now so you're going to want to swap out your watering wand for other watering accessories soaker hoses sprinklers other watering wands or sprayer nozzle type things so you got to have a quick connect I adore quick connects I've tried every Quick Connect on the market I swear and this is my favorite this is the Gilmore Quick Connect it's first of all I believe this is brass so brass is usually good with watering stuff and it's got these like rubber gripper things so the best part on this Quick Connect is that it stops the hose there is a valve there so even though the hose is on you can quick connect this without turning off the water at the hose or having to kink your hose let me it doesn't come off super easy but it does come off and I have a service right now so [Laughter] so there might be some overspray the point is is that it turns the water off maybe just don't point it in your face when you're trying to do that in any case it works they click on easily I like the little gasket part they work but they don't leak as long as you have them screwed on tight they don't leak I am all done with a leaky stuff it drives me nuts okay so now that I'm a little bit dried off let's talk about hoses I will I believe this is called a water right hose I'm gonna put a link to this down there for you you guys here's the deal with hoses with hoses you either get kink free and durable or light and prone to kinking and possibly doesn't last as long this one is somewhere in the middle it is light it pushes out a fair amount of water I believe this is the 5/8 inch one and there's a skinnier version of this I believe which is what I have over at the vegetable garden I believe it's drinking water safe and I like you guys I like hoses that aren't ugly colors I don't want a bright hose I want a hose that blends in because here's the thing I am a terrible hose coiler in fact I never do it so if I'm gonna be looking at a hose I want it to be a color that kind of blends in or doesn't look out of place here I've got the olive green color over in the vegetable garden I've got the black one they come in gray I think fun colored hoses are great if that's your thing for me I don't want to draw any attention to the fact that my hose is constantly laying around now mister much more patient hates this hose because it's a little floppy it doesn't kink easily but it will kink I mean most hoses will kink it doesn't kink easily but it will and it's a little difficult to coil he would prefer a three-quarter inch big fat heavy-duty hose and there's no doubt about it those work great and we have one of those on the back and I'll show you that host - the only problem with that is that they weigh a ton and usually when he's watering something he's just like taking it to one place and watering it I'm dragging hoses all over this yard watering stuff so for me it's more important to have something light I do always though look for good end fittings you know you want some solid usually brass and fittings are great but some kind of solid and fitting on it cheap end fittings you just know that thing is garbage it's not gonna last long I've had this hose for I think three years now it's been doing really great I have tried another hose which I have connected to the rain barrel now which is called the perfect tows and for years that really was the perfect host I loved it that one almost got me a divorce mr. much more patient and I get along pretty well but that hose was his nemesis and I thought for the better of our betterment of our marriage I should put that hose out of frequent usage to problems with that hose a it and this is one of its selling points it's impossible to kink it you can actually park a car on top of it and the water won't stop which is great until you really do need the water to stop and you can't kink a hose to stop the water and be it was impossible to coil now speaking of coiling let me show you our coiling system here okay so you can't see it because the dahlias are growing up around it right now but the hose bib on this side of the house which is the main one we need is right there so it's right on the front of our house so it makes it very difficult to store a whole is attractively here so I do run the hose behind all the dahlias here and I have it come out here and we have here just like a hose I don't know what you call this a hose bucket a hose something anyway that we call the hose up in and it's fine and it's not unattractive it kind of looks like a pot just sitting here but you do have to coil the hose in there and as you know hoses only want to go one way it's you have to put them under to coil them if you know what I mean so you do like a you do a loop that goes on top and then you do a loop that's underneath it so that you don't create more kinks in the hose and that when you pull this out of here it doesn't exactly come out of here someplace so I don't care for this method of storing my hose but I do not want something ugly like a giant hose reel or a giant hose cart I don't want anything ugly if anyone has I will pay good money for an attractive hose storage solution that allows the hose to come out easily and is easy to coil that would look fine at the front of my house so I'm looking for that so I did want to show you one other thing before we leave the front of the house here it's a little difficult to see but here behind hidden behind the dahlias is a gilmer a gilmore hose timer I've used a lot of hose timers and for a simple one to run a hose or a simple drip system off of this is my favorite because it's extremely easy to set and extremely easy to run outside of the setting without screwing everything up so this works really really well for us it does take a couple of double-a batteries and that's it but this works really well so that timer runs to drip tubing that I do have running through this bed just because this bed is all annuals and it's shaded by the eaves so it doesn't get a lot of rainwater so this is just the kind of half-inch drip tubing with holes every 12 inches I believe and we just I run this for 45 minutes every morning the window box has a self watering reservoir which is what I've always used but because it's so high it is a little bit problematic to get into to fill up the reservoir which is on the far corner of it so this year I have run drip tubing from the drip tubing that runs at the base up with just a skinny white quarter-inch line up into the thing the wind the thing being the window box and then I've got the small quarter inch drip tubing inside of there it's it's hard to figure out how much water to give that and because it's connected to this other system it's hard to regulate that amount of water so I do have a little valve here where I can turn it off or on and it's been off for a couple of days now so I just have to I still have to kind of manually watch that okay more hose talk so connected this is just another DRAM water wand but doesn't have the selector on top okay here is a light gilmore hose now Gilmore sent me this hose to try this year and I will tell you this it is extremely light it's and it's thicker than my other hoses so you do push more water out of this and it's just as light if not lighter than those hoses one of the ways they keep it light though is but there's plastic fittings on it so so far those are working great whether those keep working great or not is another question I think the other thing I would say about this is that it's very stretchy so it's interesting when you pull it sometimes it just stretches for a while before you actually move it anywhere but so far so good on this hose we I would say this is a good option if you're looking for a light hose and you're okay with the you know plastic fittings on it so we have three hoses connected together three 50-foot hoses connected together over here because this is the hose that we dragged all the way over to water some Gardens over by the driveway now this is mr. much more patience hose this is a big heavy thick I don't know where we got it we've got two of them connected they weigh a ton but I will tell you they don't kink they push water around like you wouldn't believe they are extremely durable we've had these for many many years so there is something to be said about a durable hose it's just not my favorite because it's really heavy okay so here's our new sprinkler we had to buy a new sprinkler because we can't find the old sprinkler and the easiest way to find the old sprinkler is to buy a new sprinkler this is just one of those flippy head ones I'm sure there is a name for that but we got it on a tripod this year which I like a lot goes quite far you have a fair amount of adjustment in how you can shoot the water I mean let's be honest here sprinkling is my least favorite way of watering anything I never want to be watering the leaves of a plant it's especially this can be quite forceful so I try to avoid this but at the same time it's simply the easiest way to water a large area if you just need to get some moisture on to the ground and it's certainly fine for grass although we almost never water grass here so this is our new sprinkler I'll link to that we just got it I can't say a lot about it yet I love the tripod portion of this though and I the sprinkler head is actually a zinc one they make a brass version of this it was sold out we needed a sprinkler so we got this so so far so good but like I said sprinkling is my absolute least favorite way of watering anything I only do it when I absolutely have to okay so now we're in the vegetable garden and here's the most complicated watering system we have we do have drip running to the vegetable beds in here and I will tell you it's an it's an enormous life saver it allows me to leave my garden for a week and not really worry about it I mean obviously I still have to have someone deal with containers and things but they never have to come to the vegetable garden or worrying about watering over here if I get busy at work the vegetable garden can just manage itself which is great now I can't show you how we did it and in fact we never did a video and we hooked this all up and that's because I had no idea what I was doing and I didn't want to show you a video of how to build a system but I will just tell you that and I will walk you around and kind of show you things but basically we laid it all out on paper first we've got four zones running in here and we only switched them into zones so that there would be enough water pressure because the way we get water over this vegetable garden is that we run it all the way from the house we did not have a spigot built over here we just kind of created one by running a hose over here and made sort of a fake spigot that we run everything from off of that and so because of that we didn't think we could run all the beds at one time so half of the beds are on one cycle as well as along the edges half of the beds are cycle and then we've got a third cycle running across the back and we don't use that fourth cycle at this point we could add that in if we needed to but we don't use that at this point okay so here's where the water comes in at the top of this post this is just a post that we sunk in the ground to hook everything up to and so we've got a lot of hose clamps there there's a lot of pressure running here and then we go down to a splitter and the left goes off to just the hose that I have in here and the right goes to the zones and the timers and all this now this is an orbit system and this is the timer I'm going to tell you right now I hate this timer hate it it was not cheap I hate it it's extremely hard to program extremely hard to make sure that it's actually working and ensure that it's actually running the way it's supposed to so I am considering replacing this with a raincloud system that would work off of wireless I'm just not sure the wireless from our house is strong enough to reach out here because I would like to read it on my phone screen and be able to adjust it easily without having to lay down on the ground and monkey around with this dial anyway as you can see all these all these half inch tubes run underground and they run under the gravel of course you can't see anything but we ran that half inch tube all the way across here along each of the beds and down and down these beds and they are all inside of PVC tube so that I can't accidentally sink a shovel into them or damage them in some way because digging them up would be problematic to say the least then at the base of each bed again you won't be able to see this because this all happens underneath the gravel I have run up additional tube which comes up to the top of the beds and so I've got this half-inch tube that runs each bed has its own on and off which is nice because obviously you can turn off the beds individually and then I've just got the half inch tubing that leads to the quarter inch drip tubing and I do three in the big in two in the small beds so that's how we run this so that's how we laid the whole system out I will tell you it's one of those things I found drip tubing to be extremely difficult to figure out because there's all these numbers and how do you know how many tubes to put in and how much pressure you need and all these things and at some point what I ended up doing was finding a premade raised bed kit online and then I just sort of worked my statistics off of that to figure out what I needed I don't think that's the right way necessarily to do it but it sort of worked for us the system has been working now for two years so I think we got it right the only thing that's hard for me is to figure out how to dial in how to run the water now I'm running these zones for an hour and a half each which seems like a lot to me and yet I don't feel like anything's getting too much water and sometimes I feel like it's not getting enough so my problem with drip tubing is to figure out how to dial in how long to run it for maybe that's something that just comes with experience and I know there are mathematical equations that figure this all out you know what I do sometimes is I'll take an empty cat-food can and I'll stick it under the drip tube to fill up and see how much I'm getting in terms of essentially inches from each emitter which helps me at least envision it in my mind that is about as simple as it gets but otherwise it just gets a little overwhelming and confusing I would say I would do everything I would do everything exactly the same way in this garden again I'm very happy with it other than the timer which I absolutely hate as I've mentioned I do love the option to turn off the beds when I don't need them and the one thing I would say is that one of the things I do because of the way I have my drip tubing setup is that when I plant well here let me turn you around although I'm hiding behind it a little bit here as you can tell I've got my garlic planted on this half of the bed on the other half of the bed I've got onions and if you see potatoes in here those are potatoes I clearly forgot to harvest last year because this is the bed I grew potatoes in last year but in any case as you know with garlic you want to turn the water off to it before you harvest it for a bit so that those cloves can harden down a little bit so I always put those things at the end of the bed so what I can do is take the small drip tubes and just sort of fold them back to the rest of the bed so I can continue running the water in this bed because I split my bed's in half and half I can continue running water to this bed for the onions but I can cut the garlic when I need to just by moving the drip tubing around okay you guys that's the watering port from here I'll be honest with you we've been pretty lucky we've been getting we had a lot of rain and then we've been getting this little rainstorm so it's not been a lot of pressure but it's hot so the containers need a lot of attention and I am spending a lot of time on the other end of a hose these days the good news about that is that you can use your hose one-handed so you can have a cocktail on one hand or your cup of coffee or your phone maybe do your email whatever works I hope you guys have found some watering solutions that work well for you please let me know if you have found some great watering tools I am always looking to improve my watering situation and share that with everybody else when I find something great all right have a great one you guys we'll talk soon [Music] you

Channel: The Impatient Gardener

Views: 51,951

Rating: 4.9806061 out of 5

Keywords: WATERING, water, hose, plants, gardening, garden, garden maintenance

Id: qoVDBeqYBBM

Length: 23min 56sec (1436 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 09 2020