Episode 1563: seg 1 of S10E13 Watering your garden - The Gardening with Joey and Holly Radio Show.

and before we get in the program,

Holly, it's time for this week's joke of the week.

Okay, so what do bees wear in the rain?

Be hats, be coats, see.

They're yellow jackets.

But um, bump.

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So we're going to talk about watering.

Watering, no.

Speculative rain, yeah.

Unrelated to the two just happened that way.

Watering, we can hand water.

We can use an irrigation system.

We can wait for the rain to come and water our garden.

We can overhead, we can drip.

We can use dripper meters.

We can use toker hoses.

So there's a multiple, multiple different ways

of doing this.

Now, our little story is we did not have an ingrowned

irrigation system for about 10 years.

And it is incredible how productive a bean plant,

or a pepper plant, or a tomato plant is,

whenever it's being watered regularly

and not waiting on when we get to the garden,

or when we can get out to the garden to water it,

and watering by hand with a hose or watering can,

it is not the same as consistent moisture or rain.

Yeah, you're watering the soil, oh, look, it gets wet.

But in the realization of if you're in a container,

or you're on the ground, or raised bed,

the amount of water that you have to put on that soil

in order for it to hydrate and actually get moist,

two or three or four inches below soil grade is immense.

So watering, I remember like it, I think it was like 2016,

we had, I don't know if it was like drought necessarily,

but you know, stuff just, it wasn't raining.

Right.

For a very long time during the summer,

I remember that was, I think the year before we did

get the drip irrigation.

18 is when we got the drip irrigation.

Okay, maybe it was like 2017, but I just remember

how dry stuff was.

And you know, it gallons of water

in order just to get the soil moist.

So hand watering, yeah, we can do that

in a container or a hanging basket,

but you've got to make sure that the entire,

the whole unit of soil is getting hydrated,

and it's not just watered, oh, it's dripping out the bottom,

we're good to go.

It's not because it takes time for that to hydrate

the entire unit, the whole container of soil.

Now, with a hose or with a watering can

or a jug, whatever you want to do there,

the way to go is an investment of a drip irrigation system.

Dripworks.com is the place in which you get

all the components you need for any type of in-ground

or raised bed or container on your patio,

or your porch or deck unit, dripworks.com.

And they have timers, they, you can do Wi-Fi,

you can do, uh, emitters that put out a lot more water

or emitters that put out a little bit of water.

We run our system, we have a main line

that we have buried along the edge of our raised bed garden,

and then the drip lines come off of that.

We turn it, we have it set for 20 minutes at 8 a.m.,

noon and 5 p.m., and that works very well.

Right, and so, as I mentioned,

the dripworks irrigation makes a huge difference.

Now, you can use something like a Soaker hose,

which is another irrigation type network tool.

There we go, um, it's just a little bit different

because it's just a hose with holes in it.

Well, it sweats, it's the whole, it sweats.

It's not, I can actually just, you know, the water comes out,

and people will say, oh, that's not really that good

because it is actually a rubber that can potentially leak chemicals.

Now, the drip irrigation system is plastic.

So nothing's perfect in the world.

We know that.

So your research for the product that you want, um, will vary.

And regardless, a lot of municipalities,

you pay for X amount of water up to a certain level.

Regardless if you use one gallon or I'm picking arbitrary number,

1,200 gallons, you're paying the same amount every month.

Now, once you go beyond that tier, that's when additional charges will come

because you're using more than that first tier.

So it's not, you're not going to burn through unless you really put a lot of water on.

You're not going to have an excessive water bill.

And in return, if you do, your water bill will actually produce good produce

that you don't have to go buy.

So it kind of offsets and actually you save money.

Right.

And that's it.

I think people have a misconception about using the, uh,

the drip irrigation and how much water it's going to use.

But because you are getting that irrigation right at the,

the plant level, the root level, whatever.

And you are keeping the soil continually moist as, and you're so you're being

proactive as opposed to coming along.

Oh no, my garden is so dry and then you're being reactive.

And now you get the sprinklers out and you have the hoses out and you're just

watering, water, watering, that's what gets you in trouble.

Well, the overhead watering system, the, you know, the rainbow thing,

you're, you're wasting a lot of water because it's not going to the roots.

It's evaporating based on the time of day in which you're watering.

It's getting the leaves wet on your tomatoes, your squashes, your cucumbers,

which in turn can cause, uh, powdery mildew and other diseases.

So yes, it rains.

And when it rains, the leaves get wet, but let's not additionally add moisture

to the leaves because nature knows what it's doing.

We don't, okay?

So watering at the base and our irrigation system is under leaf mulch.

In every year, we bring mulch in and, and cover the, the irrigation system.

And that's even another added level of moisture retention.

And then when it's going to rain or when it has rain, we will turn the

irrigation system off.

So it's not like watering on top of watering.

So watering, if you take anything away from this,

consistent water in the soil around your plants and a moisture consistency of a

damp sponge, if you've never done it, you should try and, try to invest it.

You will see a amazing difference in the health, the productivity and the

produce in which your plants are producing throughout the growing season.

Well, I think we should talk about is other methods like Oya's, uh-huh.

So an Oya is a clay pot.

It's like a terracotta pot and you can find these at a lot of places.

Pretty much sometimes you'll see them like garden conventions, farmers, markets,

stuff like that, and you bury it, you fill it with water.

And then because of that clay pot support, it'll go into the soil.

So maybe you're like, I only have, you know, a few raised beds.

I don't think I need a whole drip irrigation system.

You could look into something like an Oya or even those like upside down

water bulb glass things.

Yeah, you screw it.

I don't think that would work.

No, you screw a soda bottle into it, poke a hole so the water trickles into the,

yeah, so that would be like a container you would hang in your window type of thing.

So there's many different avenues of watering.

Again, keeping the soil moist.

And if you do have weeds when that soil is moist, it's easier to remove them.

You're going to have weeds regardless of such.

Keep that in mind whenever it's watering, invest now, and then you're already set up.

You can go to our parent website, the Wisconsin vegetable gardener.com,

in the search bar type in installing irrigation system.

And we have a very in-depth video in how we have done ours.

And we list all the parts from drip works and what you need if it's similar to our situation.