Three great purchases for anyone who has soaker hoses, especially in raised beds. These are actually made for that purpose and have proved invaluable in getting everything set up and now that irrigation is done, it's plant ready.
These are clamps that are made to go over 1/2" diameter hose, which is what most hose is for soaker hose irrigation systems. I needed something to keep the hose on the bed so that it didn't move around. So with these, I could 'nail' down the hose directly onto the wood sides of the beds. They were perfect for what we needed.
And then these soaker hose ground staples. They are 8" long so that they can go deep into the soil and have 1/2" hooks at the top that fit the 1/2" soaker hose. They worked brilliantly for holding down the hose in whatever configuration we wanted.
Lastly, here is our solution for watering the raised beds while not there. This awesome timer. It screws onto the faucet and then your hose screws into the bottom of that and best of all, it's weather resistant. This is under an overhang anyway so that's not a major issue but still nice to know. The top flips up and it has an LCD programming panel. You set the current time and day, and then you can program it to come on for whatever time of day, for whatever length of time and up to four times per day. You can schedule it every other day, or every day, or weekdays only. I bought it at Home Depot, but they sell them on Amazon as well. This is it: DIG Hose End Timer. I installed it at the house where the faucet is (with a dual outlet head) and then attached it to the hose that I buried a few weeks back. So now we have drip irrigation in the garden that is on a timer that will hopefully work to keep it watered throughout our long, hot Summer. As a backup, we have 2nd Family that will keep an eye on things for us.
And speaking of, got the plants in the ground this weekend! Yay! One raised bed of herbs, another of eggplants and peppers and a third larger one with all tomatoes. We have one more empty but irrigation ready bed that we are putting in squash. More on those in an upcoming post.
Lastly, here is our solution for watering the raised beds while not there. This awesome timer. It screws onto the faucet and then your hose screws into the bottom of that and best of all, it's weather resistant. This is under an overhang anyway so that's not a major issue but still nice to know. The top flips up and it has an LCD programming panel. You set the current time and day, and then you can program it to come on for whatever time of day, for whatever length of time and up to four times per day. You can schedule it every other day, or every day, or weekdays only. I bought it at Home Depot, but they sell them on Amazon as well. This is it: DIG Hose End Timer. I installed it at the house where the faucet is (with a dual outlet head) and then attached it to the hose that I buried a few weeks back. So now we have drip irrigation in the garden that is on a timer that will hopefully work to keep it watered throughout our long, hot Summer. As a backup, we have 2nd Family that will keep an eye on things for us.
And speaking of, got the plants in the ground this weekend! Yay! One raised bed of herbs, another of eggplants and peppers and a third larger one with all tomatoes. We have one more empty but irrigation ready bed that we are putting in squash. More on those in an upcoming post.
How exciting, it is all coming together and before you know it, there will be beds full of veges. Only yesterday I was marvelling at my garlic which two days ago showed no sign of being there but by yesterday afternoon I had a bed full of little spears, some as tall as 2 inches. I can't wait to see your baby veges.
ReplyDeleteIronic that you mentioned your garlic and I just posted about ours. And to show the difference in seasons, yours is just now poking out little spears and about 5 months ago, as our Winter was starting, we were experiencing the same. Too cool! Yep, hopefully baby veg coming soon!!
Delete1st Man,
ReplyDeleteYour soaker hose installations, sounds great. I know you'll have a bounty to harvest this year :-)
I have my timer attached to the faucet on the house, were thinking about attaching it to a rain barrel instead.
Yep, it's hopefully going to bountiful. At least as a start.
DeleteI'm hoping the timer does what it's supposed to do. I love the idea of the rain barrel. I hope we can have that maybe next Spring (need some gutters first, ha). New roof, then gutters, the painting, then....it's always something, ha.