I did a quick web search, everything I was finding was 500 foot roll for somewhere around $100-$150.

i live in northern virginia and its very dry here.

I use some soaker hoses, the black ones that ooz water but am not going to add to what I have, also hand water like Wayne but use overhead sprinklers during certain times and conditions. Like when we have a dry Spring and the tree pollen is dusting all of the young plants. If an expected hot dry day is ahead then watering around sunrise is good timing to allow quick drying of the plants. They seem to like the shower, their stomata can breath again.

Most of my rows are 10’ or less, although my tomatoes and sweet potatoes will be in 20’ rows. I’m accounting for double rows where I run hose down the middle.

This does worry me. Of course as I write this it has just begun to sprinkle. I have used soaker hoses with decent success. Lat summer I was in California, and saw a heartfelt presentation by a pro landscaper, who had just sworn off drip systems. He had installed over a thousand in his time, but had come to the conclusion that they were more prone to failure over time, especially at the connectors. He was deeply apologetic, as some in the audience had been his customers during the install phase. These days instead of trying to fix drips with more drips, he was fixing with soakers and rain barrels.

Probably it is too wet in the spring much of the time here. I wish for a warm and dryer spring oftentimes, but have gotten more cool and wet in years past....no help for some of the posters here.

Here’s the thing with rain barrels. The amount of water I need to water my entire garden using a drip system or any type of “directed” watering (aimed at the root zone vs just running a sprinkler everywhere) is about 200 gallons a week. I’d need about four typical sized rain barrels to have that much water, and we’d have to GET rain to have any water in them!

Then of course is the question of how to effectively get the water to my plants.

Indeed, and agreed. I see rain barrels as a way of making fast water into slow water. Plus I'm moving it from my roof to the roots, slowly.

On the transport question, I used a cheap braided hose everywhere I don't need watering (paths mostly), and the soakers where I do.The soakers are buried about 4 inches down, mostly. Now I'm thinking about ways of raining the barrels up to have gravity help more.

Thankfully, my garden sits maybe 25’ lower than the house.

Besides hoses, water can be carried in watering cans to many specimens and areas in the garden.

I have a 45 x 50 garden 200’ from the house.

I’d have to quit my job to do that.

Well, I find that most of my garden doesn't need watered all the time.

At the moment, I have approx. 1000 sq. ft. of what will be densely planted beds. I stopped using the water from the house for irrigation when the utility company started charging me for sewer use based on the number of gals. water I use. The sewer cost is more than the price they sell the water. So, I keep containers full of as much water as I can collect. I even use the water that my dehumidifier removes from the basement. I use watering cans to deliver it directly to the roots of the plants that I need to water. It is a lot of work in the driest of times, and I sometimes run low. I am constantly improving my collection system, but it keeps me active and saves me a lot of money.

We were in a bad drought at the end of last season, but this year we are getting an awful lot of rain. We're all caught up on surface water for sure, and if the trend continues, we'll soon be beyond completely saturated.

Wayne makes an excellent point. Most of any garden doesn't have to be watered "all the time" (unless one is way over-watering). So any area-wide drought warning and/or low rainfall prediction isn't all that relevant to home gardeners as long as they can supply SOME water to the garden in SOME manner when it is needed. After all even desert dwellers can garden effectively. ;-)

It is trying to incorporate maximum convenience for the grower into that situation that complicates it. Sometimes some convenience has to be sacrificed if only for the good of the plants themselves since they all don't need or tolerate the same amount of water or because of less than ideal logistics (like well capacity and distance from the water source).

The logistical issues can often be fixed by installing an additional, garden-side water storage tank and well head to double well capacity. Worked well for me as like you my gardens are hundreds of yards from the house. It eliminated both storage and lost-of-pressure problems. Can be expensive but doubles the amount of convenience and was worth it for me as my gardens are about 4x your size. Even allows for the use of a sprinkler in extra-ordinarily dry periods or when time becomes a big issue. Rain barrels (or well-filled water barrels) are good cheap alternatives.

You mentioned "everything I was finding was 500 foot roll for somewhere around $100-$150." Not sure where you are looking but I don't think any one in this thread is talking about rolls of soaker hose. Rather standard ready-made, ready to go, soaker hose usually 5/8" diameter and sold in 50' lengths with ends already attached priced for about $10 each by many sources. A 45x50 garden would need 4-5 of them depending on how the garden was laid out.

"Most of my rows are 10’ or less, although my tomatoes and sweet potatoes will be in 20’ rows". Perhaps it is your lay-out that needs revising given a 45x50' garden?

Just some thoughts to consider.

Dave

That’s true, but here’s the thing…

Hand watering is slow, you have to be so it doesn’t all run off. So if you have 30 tomato plants, 20 pepper plants, 40’ of onions, 100’ row of peas, and 40 linear feet of corn, that takes a LONG time even if you do only have to water sporadically.

When we bought this old farm house 15 years ago it had a shallow well (40') for the house so I had a new deep well installed (220') with 3 frost free faucets for the gardens. The deep well cost $6,200 but based upon our old city water bill it paid for itself in about 8 years.

Yeah clearly I wasn't advocating hand watering in my points above. Not that it isn't possible but it wouldn't be my first choice.

Dave

As far as drought, our winter storm is going to produce an equivalent of around 2 inches of rain, which is much needed.

The problem is the fact that a large percentage of that will be snow. It’s almost April, I’m kind of done with this !

Hairmetal4ever You stated,

I have a 45 x 50 garden 200’ from the house.

I’d have to quit my job to do that.

That's about the size of 1 of my gardens. I had two. It doesn't take as long as you think. But you have to figure out whether or not you really want to eat or not! And my gutt feeling is, that we are headed for some really bad times ahead with social unrest and you need to do whatever it takes to get ready for it!

That’s true, but here’s the thing…

Hand watering is slow, you have to be so it doesn’t all run off. So if you have 30 tomato plants, 20 pepper plants, 40’ of onions, 100’ row of peas, and 40 linear feet of corn, that takes a LONG time even if you do only have to water sporadically.

If you are watering each plant, it's NOT going to run off! LOL!

For that matter, get a 2 Gallon sprayer and take the misting nozzle off and you can water very quickly. It's not as accurate as a 5 gallon bucket and a cup but it will still work.

And it might interfere with some of your ONLINE time, but the sacrifice will be well worth it.

Be grateful you've got snow, it will fill the ground for your well.

Backwoodsgirl, just curious. What does social unrest have to do with watering your garden?! Sure, if all goes to hell, we may not have the equipment to have a water system, not to mention for it to even work, but in that event what's the chances of having a job to interfere with a watering schedule? I don't mean to be rude in any way, but it just seems irrelevant to me. Maybe I'm not understanding you.

I understand everyone has their opinions on how the author of this thread should be watering, but I feel this is becoming more of an argument rather than helping him. Why don't we stay on topic? He's asking for help about a watering system because he's worried about a drought. Let's help him with his watering system instead of telling him what you think he needs to be doing. It's his garden, and he can take care of it as he chooses! Sure, give your opinion, as it may help him, but don't intentionally start a fight. No one likes that.

Rain or no rain, I prefer a watering system because if we have to travel for a couple weeks, and I have no one to water my garden for me, I can rig up the watering system to do so. When we're home I water by hand because I enjoy it. Then again, being a 15 year old kid I have time for that.

Dave, your gardenS are 4 times the size of his?? How much space do you have? Sounds huge!

Wayne and Dave also had a good point, that if you DO go the watering by hand route, you don't have to water all the time. During the spring, I hardly water at all with a good mulch. Summer a bit more.

We've had a very dry winter in SW Idaho. It's finally been starting to rain, though. The soil in my unheated greenhouse (with vents open) was drying out about twice as fast as the last two years when I started seeds in them in March or April. However, that might be because of how I initially watered them.

I like to water more in the spring (shower or sprinkle), and when the plants are established and growing well, I like to stop watering altogether (even though it's a *lot* hotter then); if the plants are established, they can take the heat and the drought without watering and without rain. If I don't shower them in the spring, they don't grow / get established as fast.

Here we are all coming from different places with different gardens with different needs. For my rectangle strawberry patch, an oscillating sprikler works very well.. For my row of tomatoes, I may not need to water until July. Even then it goes good with a good flow from the hose end. Mulch helps, but really, Indiana tends to be kinda wet at times and mulch might be kinda wet.

Our climate is so weird.

On paper, it’s very equable precipitation-wise: every month averages somewhere between approximately three and 4 inches of rain. The wettest month is July at just over 4”, and the driest month being February at just under 3”.

Annual precip averages 41”. However, the reality is that typically, in any given growing season, we will have a month where we don’t even get an inch of rain, and we will have a month where we get 6 or 8”. It looks good on paper, but reality is, we tend to flip from too dry to too wet and back several times each year.

I don't usually have to worry about drought around here- 2012 was the last terrible year. But I do have to worry about watering every summer. I do a lot of beds and container growing. I do water collection like backwoodsgal does.

I have a couple sites for water collection. On the kitchen side I have a stack of 30 gallon coolers- the water flows in under the lids, and the coolers stay sealed and the water good. I use those with a blue plastic hose on the cooler drain spigots and just gravity water the containers on the kitchen side or dip out water for plants on the porch itself.
On the other side of the house I have a 275 gallon caged tank (wrapped in black plastic and a dark blue dense outdoor fabric to block out the light), a few 25 gallon barrels, and always a handful of 5 gallon buckets handy. The main gardens are maybe 100 feet away from the tanks? And I have a smaller garden close to the tanks. Full storage right now is around 500 gallons or so. So I do a couple things...

Mulch. Mulch.. and mulch. Straw in the early spring sometimes, clean grass-clippings a couple to few times a year depending on how the grass grows. Beds get buried with leaves in the fall, and sometimes I just pull back the leaf layer to put in a row of peas or other early spring stuff.

I recycle my gallon milk and vinegar jugs and my kitty litter jugs that hole 3 gallons. I keep them filled off the tanks and during the winter I keep the solarium stocked up with water for all the plants. In the summer I use them for outdoor watering. I get leakers, but instead of throwing them out, I use them in the garden for slow watering. Like in a 4x6 raised bed I'm growing 6 dwarf tomatoes in, I'll put 2-3 kitty litter jugs between the plants. Or at the base of a big tomato cage tower, I might put a few single gallon jugs- depends on how the plants are spaced.

Then when it's time to water... The 5 gallon buckets are usually used on the plants close to the house. I drop a submersable pump into the 275 gallon tank with a hose to extend down to the garden- and then fill the leaker jugs up.

I haven't needed to store more water than that yet.

Here is the updated map released this morning for Virginia. Data is from the 20th, so before the recent snows.

Drought Monitor is really very useful.

http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?VA

I'm near the white/yellow line and we don't need more rain! This last batch gave us 1.5" on top of already very moist soil, water is standing in many places, and more is snow expected this weekend? Placing in my order now for 1.25" per week for the rest of the year ;-)

Even our average doesn’t give us 1.25” a week!

"Dave, your gardenS are 4 times the size of his?? How much space do you have? Sounds huge!"

Jacob - no offense to you or hairmetal intended but please keep in mind that everything is relative. ;-)

What is huge for one person is small for another and a 50x50 foot garden would be considered small for some of us who garden. Not counting our commercial acres as the sons take care of all that now, I have 3 in-ground garden areas that are roughly 60'x150' and 8 raised beds ranging from 4x16' to 4x24'. I don't consider that huge when compared to some of the other neighboring gardens around me that make mine look small. Rural gardening is a different way of life from city or suburban gardening.

But that said I don't worry about yearly droughts because of all the work we have done on our wells and ponds (we have to have ponds for rural fire control) over the years. And his shallow well and pump limitations is the major problem hairmetal has. It either has to be fixed as vgkg and I suggested above or worked around by limiting the garden and watering to fit the well's capabilities.

Dave

I’m re-reading since I missed some stuff.

My layout - I spent a whole lot of time on it, and part of what limits me is sun. About 1/3 is of the garden is part-shade, getting maybe 3-5 hours of sun.

So I keep that area for the plants that either tolerate it or at least cool season plants that may appreciate the afternoon shade.

1.25" a week? We might get about that, give or take some, the whole season (excluding early May and early October). : ) That's normal, though (I don't think I'm in the area you guys are talking about). However, it tends to rain after Independence Day, probably due to the fireworks, and then we tend to have a few storms in late July or early August, probably due to the temperature fluctuations. Any time there's a big change in temperatures here, you can generally expect a storm (or at least some wind and a little rain) within a few days, even if it's not on the weather radar. At least, that's my experience.

We historically get most of our rain outside of the frost-free growing season, but this year, we've had a dry winter.

Even without rain, you don't necessarily need to water the whole season, though, but that depends on how you like to garden—and maybe your available soil, too. I'm talking about in-ground. Containers normally need to be watered regularly (although I've had situations where they didn't need it very often, which was pretty cool). As to why they didn't, I'm still unsure, but I had three small to smallish tomato plants in an ~18 gallon container, and I didn't have to water them the last part of the season (for maybe a month or two), although I think I got nervous and watered them once or twice anyway. They produced the most during the last part of the season, actually: they were Sub Arctic Plenty and a couple of my own tomatoes I'm breeding out of Husky Cherry Red.

Our little Mid Atlantic precipitation hole continues. This storm today is well south. The “rain” that technically fell this morning didn’t even wet the pavement here. We have had 0.1” for April so far, and about the same for the last 10 days of March. Only light/scattered rain is in the 10-day forecast.

Our last significant precipitation was the March 20/21st snowstorm. March ended about 1.5” below normal.

This rain event that is missing you has given us about 1/3 inch so far with maybe another 1/3rd expected. Just in time to tuck in the spring planted veggies here. We will barely dodge the 20's tonite and that should clear the future path for warmer temps ahead.

It’s frustrating to have dreary cool weather, and measurable rain about every other day, but still nowhere near enough. I’ve lost count of how many dreary days we have had where 0.02” of rain fell.

We've had plenty of rain back here as of now this past month. Low 20's and a little snow this morning. Hopefully you guys in the mid Atlantic will get some rain.

Same here in NOVA. Our D1 drought moved back just a touch. Still in D0. I'm pretty happy with my buried soaker hoses now. I just wish I had more rain barrels though.

Here's our latest: Drought Monitor

I think the cold pattern is set up in such a way to divert storms away from us. Hopefully once that breaks down we can at least return to a more typical spring pattern.

In another few weeks we'll probably be worried about flooding rains and rotting veggies.

I don't even think I've seen a cloud since February. The winter rains never materialized, only a few little showers that only wet the top 1/16" of dust. Even the creosote bushes look burnt and dead. Not an easy feat for what is considered to be one of the most drought tolerant plants in North America.

We are now headrd full speed into summer. Its getting into the mid 90's regularly, one of the guys at work said his thermometer said 104º the other day. By this point of the year, we don't expect rain until the monsoon season in July/August.

But it was a dry winter across the entire west. In Denver, where I'm originally from, it only snowed a handful of times between November and March. Winters are typically dry there on the high plains, but not that dry. They are finally getting into second winter, the snow season, which usually begins in late February-March and in some years lasts into May. I think I saw high 70's for their forecast later this week, so we'll have to wait and see if the bottom falls out again.

We are technically in a La Nina event, albeit a weak one. So this warm, dry winter and spring for these parts of the country (Arizona and central Colorado) is to be expected. I'm not sure what effect it has on the Atlantic coast states.

Fingers crossed. Sunday may turn out to be one of those good spring fronts where you get several hours of heavy rain.

I’m hoping that these storms were supposed to get Sunday night into Monday actually turn into something.

Most of our “thunderstorms” this spring have been a six minute light shower that shows up as a super thin line on radar.

We got 2.25" of rain here near Richmond last nite, thankfully not violent locally but that should keep the garden happy for a while and it also washed away the smothering pollen. How's things in up Maryland, wet enough now?

Only 1.25” here more or less. Good rain, but we still have a monthly deficit, let alone a long term one.

I think gardeners tend to hugely overwater their gardens. I could water my garden 5 times in a typical year and would have no major issues.

Peter that is probably true. My area is tough due to a couple factors:

1. I have loamy, almost sandy soil (Many around me have clay, though)

2. We tend to go three weeks without much more than a trace of rain, then get 2” - 3” at once.

How nice to see this evolve as a thread. It is very interesting to keep an eye on the data for your specific garden, and the bigger picture.

Peter is right that over watering can be a huge issue. I did that, and lost plants. My garden was almost without topsoil, and the holes I made to plant things became "clay buckets" for the rain. Things are much better now.

At my closest weather station (KIAD) while the data does show moderate drought ('D0' linked above), the rain deficit data isn't too crazy for the most part (NWS LINK for IAD precipitation PDF) when looked at annually. However at the month level it is quite varied. I'm sure at the week level it is likely even more varied. What I'm thinking is maybe younger plants mostly exist at the week or month level, and in the absence of rain gently adding a little water (e.g. 5 centiliters, or 1/4 cup) every 3 days will might them going until they are more mature, or the rain comes back.

These days having recreated the topsoil, I'm mostly thinking about coping with the variabilities, ensuring great root systems to cope with and store a larger precipitation event when it comes.

"In another few weeks we'll probably be worried about flooding rains and rotting veggies."

Well, my veggies aren't rotting yet but after 7" of rain and more expected this week my drought worries are over.

My lilac flowers have rotted.

Didn't get to enjoy them this year.

All three major DC/Baltimore area airports are well over 5” of rain for May so far.

Yet here, my little “rain hole” in southern Howard county, I’m about 3.8 inches. It’s bizarre how EVERY precip event since October (except a couple ice/snow events)has been a glancing blow for my area as opposed to a direct hit. While my garden is plenty wet at the moment, I need a couple of above normal months of rainfall to recharge groundwater, and I am on a well.