SNIP N DRIP RAISED BED GARDEN IRRIGATION

Many of you have emailed and/or commented asking us how we are watering and keeping up with a garden (albeit a small one) while not being there to water on a daily basis.

Well, we are using this pieced together system...and it's working!

It's the Snip-n-Drip soaker hose system.  We bought this package from Gardener's Supply but it's also sold through Amazon:

Gardener's Supply Snip-n-Drip Soaker Hose System, Drip Irrigation With Fittings 1/2 Inch by 50-Feet Includes Quick Connect

It's SO easy to set up.  Took me about 10 minutes to get all the raised beds hooked up.  The first thing I did was plan out how best to run it.  I drew out a plan of the four beds I wanted to do.  

How to lay out Snip n Drip Irrigation

It starts at the faucet, then goes to and through the first bed in a serpentine shape to go around the tomatoes and jalapeño.  Then it leaves there and heads to the herb bed, leaves that bed and finally to the okra bed where it dead ends.  A separate connection goes to the eggplant and will eventually connect into the other four beds on that side of the garden.

All the pieces included

The package came with enough to handle all this.  What you have to calculate is how many starts and stops you will have and then where it will end.  It works by having a few feet of regular hose, connected to a soaker hose through the bed, then to a regular hose between beds, then back to a soaker hose in the bed, and so forth, until the last bed where it will end and you cap off the soaker hose with an end cap.  It's kind of a closed loop of water.

Here is a closeup of how it all connects.  

The black connector in the middle is where the work is.  After you cut your hose pieces to the right length, you put a screw cap on the regular hose, then stick it into the connector.  You do the same on the other side with the soaker hose after you cut it to the length you need.  

Snip n Drip closeup

Then you screw each side toward the connector and this tightens it up so there are no leaks and they can't pull out.  By the way, all of these hoses are cut using regular scissors, making it quick and easy to adjust (if you mess up, don't cut off TOO much each time).

I put them in after planting the herbs and veggies to make sure I got the hose close to the base of the plants (plus it's much easier when plants are small).

Snip n Drip

This is a soaker hose, not a drip irrigation (though they do make that, but it seemed far too complicated for us, at least initially).  So you do NOT want this running for 30 or 40 minutes.  Another thing we've found is that the section closest to the faucet gets more water (due to pressure) than the end section, so plan accordingly.  

For example, tomatoes need lots of water, I made sure they were in the bed closest to the faucet.  Okra not so much, so it's at the end.  Again, not a huge difference but something to take into account.

Raised Bed Watering

After I got them positioned where I wanted them, I covered them with the straw that I had in the beds.  The straw keeps the raised beds moist too.  It's not the most attractive set up (maybe if I buried or covered the hoses between beds) but hey, it works and that's ALL that matters.

DIG Programmable Timer

So, you still might be asking, but how do you water?  Well, we're relying on technology.  This is the DIG Programmable Timer.  They've changed a bit since we bought ours a couple of seasons ago, but here is the newest version:  

DIG Corporation Model BO92A, Programmable 2-Dial Water Hose End Watering Timer

We put it on the main faucet where the water goes to the garden area.  This cuts the water on and off at whatever time you set it to.  So at the garden end, we leave the faucet on.  This will turn the source on and off.  We have it set to go on twice a day, early morning and late afternoon, for 10 mins each, and only on Monday/Wednesday/Friday.  So far so good, haven't watered by hand all season, have had several weeks now of zero rain, and things are growing well.

We will expand this after this season to one more bed. Our faucet in the garden has a four manifold outlet as above.  I couldn't find the one we have but I found this one on Amazon: 

Nelson Faucet Adaptor - High Flow 4-Outlet Manifold 50316  

This will let us create several beds with separate set ups.  Eventually, we'll expand this system to all the beds in the garden.

We bought all of these ourselves, this review is our own, not reimbursed for anything.  We just felt after a fairly successful season and finally finding a way to make it work, we wanted to share how we set ours up for those in similar situations.  Call it 'gardening by remote', ha.  Someday, I'll be standing out there with a hose every morning, but until then...

...so far, so good!