Soaker Hose Surgery

So I've been missing. Here's one thing I was doing. The lettuce finally bolted in early August so I dug it all up and started fresh. New lettuce from seeds as well as a few experiments. I'll be covering it in plastic as it gets colder so I'm trying to see what might grow in the cooler fall under cover I also wove the soaker hose through the garden bed so watering would be easier, I forgot to do it in the Spring.

To get the soaker hose to fit in the bed in neat rows I had to bend it at some sharp angles. I finally turned it on a few days ago (too much rain to need it before then) and only some of it would work. The angles had cut off the water travel space too much. Grr.

A few weeks ago I went on a farm tour with my mother and lusted after their drip watering system. All the ones I looked up would only work on 18" spacing and cost an arm and a leg or needed lots of setup (micros drip watering). So I went out and looked at hose fittings. I got 4 female hose menders, 4 male hose menders, 3 2-way shutoffs and 4 hose caps. I then chopped the existing 5/8 soaker hose I had into pieces putting the ends on and attaching it all to the shutoffs. (I could have gotten a 4 way splitter, but it would have been $15 bucks, and 3 2-way splitters only cost $3.75, however they will have to be replaced eventually and brought in before winter as cold temps will cause them to crack and start to leak.) I also might have managed to end the hoses with wire folding them closed rather then male fittings and caps, but I wanted the option of stringing them together again.

I now have 4 equalish lengths of soaker hose hooked into the splitters and laid straight along the bed. (I considered buying a new flat soaker hose too, but I figured I should take apart what I already had first.) And it works perfectly. I even had enough menders to make the leftover piece usable as well. Next year I'm laying soaker hose along all the beds fed from rain barrels. I'll also be adding at least one more bed due to my mother's new local food desires (she watched Food, Inc., and I read Tomatoland either of which will make you organic and local food nuts). We're likely also getting a dying tree removed and the other big tree trimmed so we can have more light for vegetable gardening.

I also may need to do this again later because this isn't so much a soaker hose now as a spraying hose with tons of pinholes in it causing it to spray water above the plants. The next time I try tomatoes I want to avoid getting them too wet by spraying, and this hose likely won't manage it.