You need to measure the output of your system per hour per square yard or (for drip) per plant. You should be watering about an inch at a time or 5 gallons per square yard. This would then last 3-8 days depending on the weather.

I know you all are having extreme conditions, but I question whether daily watering is ever a good idea. except for plants in too-small pots. Another exception is drip systems, which some people run more frequently, perhaps a gallon every day or two gallons every other day during extreme hear.

When you run sprinklers often and lightly in hot weather, you waste a lot of water to evaporation in the air and from the wet surface. You may not be getting much penetration.

As a temporary measure, though, we have used this with good effect -- we almost always have a number of 1-G pots with newly-propagated roses, and those are a concern.

USUALLY we gather all the pots together in one tight configuration, and suspend a hose-end sprinkler OVER them, so that it will spray down on them. Then, we set it to go off every other day. The rest of the place is on timer-driven systems.

Jeri

michaelg, I have been told to do that and never have, but good reminder. The drip irrigation is a bit harder to determine, as this is the hose with holes every foot or so, so it is not a tube directly feeding each plant, but I will see what the rest of the system does. I am curious how long an average system runs...and I know time should not be the measurement, but wondering if I am way off.
Thanks for the input, and I will do that.

Jeri, great idea. I am hoping to get the remainders of my "in pot's" in the ground...but 106 today!! It is so hard to leave these unattended. On your timers, how long do you run them?

TOO, I have wondered if I debudded roses in hotter areas of the yard, if that would help destress them. I recall one year I pruned a bit, and ended up killing a few, as I guess they took that as a sign to grow. But debudding? Sounds like an option. What do you think?

Clay thinks it's eight minutes. That made them pretty wet, of course, but that seemed preferable to not enough.

And it worked here, perfectly.

Jeri

It sounds like you have a soaker hose rather than a drip system.

For the soaker hose, you could place containers to catch some of the streams at the far end of the hose, the near end, and the middle (the far end will emit less owing to pressure drop). Run the water for a known time, say 10 minutes. Measure the total water captured and divide by the number of streams/containers. This gives you average emission per hole. Then multiply by the number of holes in the soaker hose. This gives you emission per 10 minutes for the area.

For the sprinkler system, place a bunch of cat food cans around the garden and run the sprinkler until some are full, measuring the time it takes for the sprinkler to deliver this 1".