Low Maintenance Garden Watering Systems: Go on Vacation while your Garden Thrives!
Water can take up a lot of your gardening time, especially if you have multiple garden beds, or a large orchard. Automating your garden watering systems is the easiest and most straightforward way to reduce the amount of time you need to be physically working in your garden.
Automating your garden watering is one of the core pillars of the Lazy Food Forest Method. In this post I’m going to share the secrets of how to set up your orchard and garden watering system using hacks and automated watering tools to reduce the amount of time you need to spend watering your garden.
I don’t know about you, but standing there with a hose is relaxing for like 3 minutes, but I’d rather not spend my whole lunch break just holding a hose in different directions. I love gardening, but I’m a busy mom, the house usually needs tidying, and my full time job isn’t going to work itself. That’s why I love smart garden hacks and automations SO MUCH. I’m able to have my beautiful, abundant garden and chickens, and grow my own food, without spending a ton of time maintaining it.
Which Garden Watering System in right for you?
There are two types of garden watering systems you can utilize to reduce the amount of watering you need to do. You can optimize absorption of the water that ends up in your garden (water control), or you can provide water to your garden in a hands-off way (this is what I mean by “automating your watering”).
I, personally, do both.
First, Let’s talk about Water Control
Controlling the water that ends up in your garden ensures the water is maximally used by the plants, and minimally evaporates or runs off. Two ways to improve this include: Digging a Watering Moat, and Mulching.
A Watering Moat is a little rign of mounded dirt that you dig around a plant’s base, so that water will pool near the plant and be absorbed into the soil. In my orchard, I dig moats about 3″ deep about 18″ out from the base of my fruit trees so that when it rains, the trees can soak up as much water as possible.
My orchard is on a slight slope so the water otherwise runs downhill and the trees and berries don’t absorb much of it, which can lead to them needing to be watered by hand (especially if they are a young tree). The Watering Moat solves this issue, and the rain usually does the trick so I don’t need to water my new trees quite so often.
Mulching refers to covering the ground with wood chips, hay, or by planting “living mulch” (My personal favorite)! Living mulch could be a ground cover (like Oregano) or creeping plants (like zucchini or cucumbers) which shade the earth and prevent evaporation.
As you can see, I like to use edible living mulch! It is super efficient for maximizing the harvest of my garden while benefitting the other plants around them.
Automated Watering Systems for Gardens
I also love automated watering systems in the garden. Specifically, I use a soaker hose with a timer. This lets us go on vacation and not worry about our garden getting enough water. It’s a very low-tech way to keep your garden low-maintenance.
Soaker Hose: The Easiest Way to Automate your Garden Watering
A soaker hose is just a hose with small holes in it, so that water slowly flows out of the whole length of the hose, soaking your garden. You lay it in the garden bed, zig-zagged over the soil (or you can busy it under the soil if you want a more aesthetic look. When you pair the soaker hose with a hose timer, you have just created an easy way to make your garden nearly hands-off!
Watering your garden with a soaker hose is best for gardens and raised beds with crops in one tight area. Since the water drips from the entire length of the hose, it will soak the entire garden area, which is perfect for crops that are spaced close together.
If you program the timer to water your garden once or twice per day, you can save yourself at least 10-30 minutes everyday (thats like 1-4 hours per week!). It takes a little bit of work (but not too much work) to set up the hose the first time, but it’s well worth the time savings.
If you plan to go on vacation and want to monitor your watering more carefully while you’re away, or coordinate waterings with the weather, you can also pick up an app-controlled smart timer for you hose. This type of timer lets you adjust it while you’re away, and monitor how it’s working.
Drip Irrigation: The Most Precise way to Automate your Garden Watering
For larger gardens, or more spaced-out plantings – like berry bushes, tomatoes, eggplants, or fruit trees, you might opt for a more precise drip irrigation system. Using drip irrigation in your garden ensures your plants are watered in a more targeted way.
The spouts will only water the area that needs to be watered (like the base of your plant), so as you can see this is a much more targeted irrigation system for plantings that are further apart from each other. If you were to use a soaker hose on them, you would probably be wasting a lot of water. You can also set this drip irrigation system on a timer, so you don’t have to remember to turn it on.
I don’t use drip irrigation in my garden or orchard since my trees and berries are already pretty well established. But if you are just starting out and your young trees or plants need regular watering, a drip irrigation system like the one I linked above can save you a LOT of time watering while they get established. This system can also be used on landscaping shrubs and any other plants that need regular watering!
Grab my 2 raised bed garden layouts, which use companion planting and are perfectly spaced for a soaker hose watering system:
How to Choose the Best Garden Watering Systems for your Garden
As you can see, there are multiple Automated Garden watering systems to choose from. It’s just a matter of choosing the right one for your exact set up and needs. Here is quick summary of how to choose the best garden watering system for your garden set up:
- Raised Beds, and Plantings spaced close together (less than 10 inches apart): Choose a Soaker Hose with a Programmable Hose Timer.
- Plants Spaced 12+ inches apart , and newly planted Orchard trees & berry bushes: Choose Drip Irrigation with a timer.
While these systems might take a bit of time to set up at first, it’s not significant. It takes me under an hour to set up the timer and soaker hose combo for my 2 raised beds. The Drip Hose kit touts “easy install” and in the long run I am sure it will save you time. Especially when you calculate how much time you actually spend per week watering your garden/orchard by hand.
When to set up your Automated Watering systems
Early spring is the best time to set these up. Typically I will set up the soaker hose on top of the garden soil after I plant my seeds, so I can keep them nice and wet during germinations. Once the plants are established and thinned, I’ll bury the hose a little bit so it’s not such an eye sore.
The Drip Irrigation system can be set up before or after you plant. If you know where each plant will go, you can set up your system in advance. However, it might be easier and more practical to wait until after your plants are in the ground to add your drip irrigation, so you can make sure they are properly aimed and spaced to water the ground near the roots of each plant.
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