Watering Again

I received the low-pressure soaker hose I mentioned earlier. You can find it here. First, I tested it at home and it seemed to be working fine. So I built a platform 2 ft. high from 4x4's and 2x4's to hold a rain barrel up off the ground. This gives a slight amount of water pressure via gravity to feed the water through a hose to the soaker hose which I lay along a row.


I fill this distribution barrel from another barrel in my pick-up truck (hidden behind the cab in the picture). The transfer of 50 gallons only takes about 10 minutes with a nifty 12-volt water pump I got for $30 at Harbor Freight.





I attached about 100 ft. of light duty garden hose to the barrel. That'll reach anywhere in my garden. The soaker hose drains the barrel in about 2 hours. Voila! The garden gets watered and I don't have to carry water or wait around for the hoses to do it. By concentrating the water at the base of this row of bush beans, I am putting the water right in thr root zone.

We'll see how well this works. The forecast is for a continued hot, dry dummer and fall, so this system could be very important for us.