How to Water a Garden

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PHOTO: FOTALIA/NORRIE39
The trickle watering method, or drip irrigation, may be better for your garden than relying on rainfall or deluges from the hose.

Up until this year, my garden had always relied pretty much on what nature supplied in the way of rainfall. Sure, I’d get out the hose and sprinkler when we went too long between showers . . . but I generally watered when I had time to, not necessarily when the garden really needed moisture.

How to Water a Garden: Drip Irrigation

Now, I’m a convert to a new system of watering: drip irrigation. This trickle watering method brings a constant supply of liquid right to the roots of plants either by a plastic hose with small valves (called emitters) spaced every couple of feet . . . or by microporous plastic pipes that weep liquid along their entire length. Both systems share some very real advantages over conventional methods of watering. For one thing, drip setups use substantially less water . . . as much as a third less, according to some studies. That’s because there is no runoff loss and much less evaporation than with sprinkling or furrow irrigation. And since the moisture is supplied just to the root area of the vegetables, few weeds get watered between the rows!

Especially important is the fact that the regular application of appropriate amounts of moisture reduces water stress on the vegetables. There’s no cycle of dry/wet/dry… what Dan Cotten of Submatic Irrigation Systems compares to eating a huge turkey dinner every Thursday, and then fasting the remaining days of the week. Instead, the constant level of moisture leads to faster plant growth and earlier harvests (an important consideration if you’re growing for market, where the early crop wins top dollar).

Of course, since the water is just in the soil and not on the leaves, many troublesome plant diseases never get a chance to start. (I’m hoping that a drip system will help control an anthracnose problem I’ve had with my tomatoes.) And there’s another, somewhat unexpected, benefit that the setup confers: Studies in Israel have shown that you can grow salt-sensitive crops-such as cucumbers-in soil with a high sodium content if you use drip irrigation. It seems that the constant water pressure of the fed liquid forces salt in the soil to the outer edges of the wetted area, away from the plants’ roots. This means that the feeder roots have to contend with only the sodium content of the water . . . not the more intense salinity built up in the soil.

  • Published on Jul 1, 1983
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