how to water garden?

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Our family just moved from 2 acres to 18 acres. We have always done square ft. gardening,now with all this property we wanted to make a lager row type garden. We have planted about a half acre vegetable garden.The problem is ,how do you water a large garden? I have talked to a lot of people who say they "flood the rows". We have been using sprinklers so far.It seems like there should be a better way.Any ideas? Also, this is our first year planting melons. Watermelon and cantaloupe.Anything we should know,tricks to the trade,or good advice? Thanks , Amy

-- Amy (pezant@eatel.net), April 13, 2001

Answers

We do both, SFG and row type. I use a small area (3 ft) lobe sprayer in the SFG and we build 2 to 3 inch dikes down the rows to flood water them.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), April 13, 2001.

Congrats on your move to a larger place. I'm not sure if this will help but one of the ways that we water vegies mainly tomatoes, this also works on any garden plant is to place a gallon milk jug in the ground with the lid off just a few inches from the plant have a few small holes in the jugs, this way once a week fill up the gallon jug and there you have it tomatoes are good for another week. You can also add your plant food into the jugs for continous feeding. God Bless.

-- tracy emily in TN (emilyfarms@tsixroads.com), April 13, 2001.

drip irrigation is suppose to use less water then sprinkle systems.With a sprinkle system, water is wasted through evaporation.There is also less weeding to do due to the fact that only the plants you want watered gets the water .Not the weeds inbetween

-- SM Steve (A12goat@cs.com), April 13, 2001.

When I planted in rows, I used one of those lawn sprinklers.. the type that fan the water. If it isn't prohibitively expensive, you might try drip irrigation... I think that would cost a lot, though.

-- Sue Diederich (willow666@rocketmail.com), April 13, 2001.

We water about 1/3 of an acre using 360 degree rotating impulse heads on 6 foot tripods. Connected to a regular garden at approx. 60 psi, we are able to water a circle 70 feet in diameter. The garden hoses are connected to 1 inch supply lines that is powered by a 1 horse power (220volt) eletric pump. With this setup we can easily run six heads at a time.

-- David in NH (grayfoxfarm@mcttelecom.com), April 13, 2001.


Take a garden hose and punch a lot of little pinholes in it- all in a line. If you water half the garden a day; you will need a hose for each row to be watered. Put a plug on the end. Turn on the water. Simple, effective, cheap. It kinda spays out, but not as high or far as a sprinkler (thus more water goes on the garden instead of into the wind or evaporated.

-- Kevin in NC (vantravlrs@aol.com), April 15, 2001.

Greetings from ShadowHoller! In our HUGE garden, we used T-tape. A friend ordered it from some greenhouse supply company, and we were VERY happy with it. We had tried using soaker hoses, but the minerals in the water plugged it up after one year. We have been re-using the T-tape for three years now, and have not had to replace any but what we inadvertently put holes in with shovels :o) I think we paid about $80 for 1000 ft of it, but maybe it was less than that. Patty

-- Patty Wilkins (shadowholler@dmea.net), April 16, 2001.

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