How to water a large vegetable garden?
 

Probably the wrong time of year to be posting this :laughing: but I'm a perpetual planner so I'm trying to figure this out for next year.

We just had our fence put in at our new house, including a section around what will be my vegetable garden.

The area is 40ft x 20ft.

I'm just trying to figure out what the best way to water our garden will be. Ideally, if I could install a permanent irrigation system in it, that'd be great. But it obviously wouldn't work when we have to till up the ground each year.

I just think it would take *forever* to bring out the house and move around the garden sprinkler each time.

Also, my neighber will probably be watering for us occasionally when we're on extended vacations at the cottage, so I don't want it to be too much work for her too.

Any suggestions?

My previous vegetable gardens were always much smaller, so watering by hand with the hose wasn't a big deal.

I should mention, that getting the water source to the garden itself isn't the problem. Hubby plans on either trenching a line from the house to the garden, or perhaps tapping into the well which is really close to the garden (about 5 ft away).

The question is more, how to get the water from the source to the plants, without taking 3 hours every evening. :o

when I had my 75 X 90 foot garden I used a sprinkler...*L* took awhile to get everything watered but I'd start at 5 am and let it run in 6 different spots for roughly 20 minutes each place, always in the morning (plants don't like having wet feet going to bed) I had peatmoss over top of the ground to absorb and hold the water so the plants would take it as needed, worked well!

I use a drip system. I have a timer to turn it on at set times. I then have a set of valves at different places in the garden so that I can control what gets watered. I have connectors so that I can customize the set up each year, each connector also has a valve before it.
I find this system to be the most efficient in water usage and my time.Plus I do not water where the crops are not thus cutting down on weeding.

I watered a bigger garden than that by hand for years. 80" x 30". Didn't like the sprinkler because it didn't discriminate between paths and actual veggies.

You can do drip irrigation, we do now. Same as you, my OH ran a line in a trench to and along one side of the garden. That line stays in all winter and he blows it out each Fall. In the garden are removal drip lines that we pull out each Fall. We prefer to bury the drip line so it is not spraying beyond where we want it to go. There is a problem with this method in that it does make planting and bit awkward, seeds need to go close to the line. We often plant first, then bury the line when we have germination. And, any line left on the surface expands remarkably in the heat and when it does it develops waves and has wiped out rows of tender seedlings.

Oh, and when digging potatoes we have to be careful not to slice a line. Still, it works very well.

Mulch, mulch, mulch! :)

I have a huge garden and i live off grid so since i have to haul around 100 feet or so of 3 inch fire hose to water..............i mulch everything heavily so i rarely if ever have to water.