If I buy high-quality soaker hoses that have a 7-year warranty, they'll last a good long time if I store them in the garage in winter, but I haven't bought any in several years so I don't know what's currently out there on the market.

The soaker hoses we have around our house foundation to water the dense, clay soil so it won't dry out too much and crack and potentially harm the foundation have been there for five years now and are still in good shape. However, most of them are under the wrap around porch and the parts out in the open are covered by mulch.

The ones I use in the garden are hidden under mulch duing the gardening season, and in the garage the rest of the time.

Red plastic mulch generally is not worth the expense and I consider it pretty much a 'gimmick' the retailers use to take your money and give you little benefit in return. It came onto the market around 2000 or 2001 and people got very excited about it based on one or two university research studies. The early studies showed it increased fruit production up to 20% on some tomato plants in the climate studied (which was not in Oklahoma), but in subsequent research and when used by real people in real gardens, the increase is minimal and rarely above 10%.

Research in west Texas in the mid-2000s showed it would not be cost effective for anyone except commercial growers who grow many acres of determinate plants at very precise spacing (4 or 5 foot spacing between plants). At 1 mil thick, it will not hold up well in our climate either.

You will get better production using any mulch as opposed to no mulch at all, and in tests, silver and black are more effective in general that the other colors. I prefer using hay, straw, grass clippings, chopped and shredded leaves or even partially finished compost because all those feed and improve the soil as they break down.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Texas Research on Plasticulture and Tomatoes

Thanks Dawn, I was beginning to think I was all alone in the world.

Over the years we've bought soaker hoses from WalMart and Lowe's for about 9 or 10 dollars for 50 ft hoses. (Which for some reason sometimes are 52 ft long.) We now have 16 at least. Even these cheap ones last several years for us. We cover them with mulch in the garden and roll them up and store them under cover over the winter. Every year at least one blows out irreparably. Don't have a clue how long each one lasts before it blows because don't label them with the year of purchase, but know that a few of them are over 8 years old maybe more. I think the secret to making them last is to cover with mulch and keep the pressure low when using them--and to store them where mice can't get to them. Or a hose-chewing puppy.

Telow,

I wasn't ignoring your post but was slow to answer because I was pondering whether I thought red mulch was effective for a home gardener....and based on many comments I've heard from others who have tried it as well as more recent research studies, I just didn't think it was worthwhile in our climate.

There is some research that indicates it might be helpful early in the season for folks in parts of the country that are much farther north than we are, but even that research doesn't show as much improvement in yields as early research did. One problem with using any colored mulch under tomato plants is that if you grow indeterminate types, they'll quickly get large enough to block the sun's rays from hitting the mulch, so the light isn't bouncing up off the mulch and onto the plants in whatever color of the spectrum that is supposed to be helpful to them. Thus, even if there was any benefit, it would be only for the first few weeks the plants were in the ground.

One thing that bothers me, and I'm not saying this happened in the case of the red mulch because I absolutely don't know if it did, but we humans often are gullible and will buy things based on "university research" but we never know if it was independent research or if the manufacturer of the product was financing the research, which would make the results somewhat suspect.

Soaker hoses are wonderful and save a huge amount of water. I also think a garden that is watered with drip irrigation or with soaker hoses tends to stay healthier because the water is going into the root zones where it is needed and not onto the foliage where it can contribute to all kinds of foliar issues like Early Blight on tomatoes and powdery mildew on virtually everything else.

As Dorothy noted, protected ones last a long time, especially if you protect them from being chewed. I have a very large dog who chews up cans, so he isn't allowed in the garden or there's no telling what he'd chew up. In the paste he has chewed on trees, pumpkins, squash, gourds, corn and tomatoes, so he is restricted to a nicely fenced and shaded 'dog yard' where he can't chew up anything in the garden. In the fall when I am doing garden cleanup I do let him into the garden where he frantically runs around looking for something, but by then, there's nothing there he can tear up.

Dawn

I usually buy a few soakers each year at Sam's club. We are getting a new Sam's just down the road which will make it TOO convenient.

They would last a long time if I took good care of them and didn't have a high rodent population. overall I think they are a good investment.

Thank you one and all for your responses and thank you duckcreek for mentioning Sam's club because Ihad'nt thought of them at all. When I lived near Arcadia, that is, when I first bought the acrage, I had it in my mind to line the 400ft. driveway with dogwoods. There were large groupings of oaks and a few walnuts which I had to plant around and as time went on I cleared the under brush out to the north several hundred ft. and planted there as well. Eventually I had planted 35 white, pink and red ones. The thing was, I did'nt have a well dug yet and as some of you might remember that particular year was called El-Nino. There was one week the temp was(over a 4 day period) 109, 110, 112 114.The next year was not quite as hot but was a drought year Incidentally, I only planted 10 or 12 trees during this time. The way we would water them was to bring water in trash cans and dip it out in 5 gal. buckets. I don't care how slow you drove by the time you got to the land(as we called it)each can was about half full of water. Anyway, eventually we got a house built and a well dug but still was faced with the problem of watering the dogwoods. This was 20 years ago and I knew even less than Ido now about different types of watering systems,....so...I bought over a 1000ft. of lifetime guaranteed hoses and all sorts of T connections and ran circles around each tree and divided them into two sections, A and B. I drilled small holes in the hoses around each tree and watered Aand B on separate days. It worked. Most of those trees are 20ft. tall now or better. I still have alot of those hoses and the man I bought this place from gave me 5 or 6 more of different sizes. I've been researching soaker hoses and drip irrigation for days and my wife suggested I do the same thing again to save money and to make all these hoses useful. I think if I use a pressure regulater it will probably work because I would'nt want to splash water on the plants and cause disease. I value all your opinions because the Bible says "a wise man has many counselors". Thanks again.

Larry has a great drip irrigation system he built out of PVC, perhaps Larry will share his knowledge and photos.

Keith

I expect most of us have good systems, and most have to tweak out our systems to match out needs.

Mine does happen to be a PVC system that does work great. It is PVC mainly because I had a well with a lot of minerals in it that would stop up a soaker hose.

In tweaking your system two things to keep in mind is, double the dia. will increase the flow 400%, and each foot of elevation will change your pressure .4 LB.

If your are trying to use a system like I have every thing needs to be pretty level down stream stream of each controling ball valve or the low areas will get most if not all of the water.

I feed my 5/8 garden hose through 4 way splitter that has a 11/32 dia. hole through the ball valve. I only run one hose to each garden and feed 6 to 8 20' 1/2" sch. 40 Pvc tubes at a time. My incoming pressure is 44 LBS. I have a manual timer set up on the faucet because I too often forget and leave the water on too long.

Yes, I will be glad to help in any way. I have my system stored now but I'm sure I have some pictures that show it. I am still revising my system because I am still enlarging my gardens. If I ever get things set up like I want, my irrigation system will be different than it is now. I hope to have a 3/4" underground feed line run to ea. garden.

Larrt