How To Set Up a Soaker Hose and Watering Timer for Your Garden!
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- Опубліковано 9 лип 2024
- Thanks for watching! This video shows how I set up my soaker hose system and timed watering. Please let me know if there is anything you need me to clarify. I would love to hear from you.
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/ fieldoffocus
Time Stamps
00:27 overview of my garden
01:18 types of soaker hoses I use
03:45 start the steps to setting it up
04:49 start to finish setting up soaker hose in part of my garden
09:02 setting up system, needing to attach two hoses with T-joint and ending the hose
13:52 my automatic watering timer system
Here is what I used for my Soaker Hose System!
Miracle Gro Soaker System
Swan Products MGSPAK38100CC Miracle-GRO Soaker System Customizable Hose with Push on Fittings, 100' x 3/8", Black
amzn.to/2Zu0wg8
Flexon 1/2-in X 75-ft Black Soaker Hose
amzn.to/2LTxFKb
FLEXON Soaker Kit 3/8-in x 100-ft Medium-Duty Rubber and Vinyl Black Soaker Hose
www.lowes.com/pd/FLEXON-Soake...
Melnor Metal 4-Way Hose Valve
amzn.to/2A6MtSR
Two Zone Electronic Water Timer
amzn.to/3bZPrpy
Gilmour 804014-1001 400GTD Outlet Electronic Water Timer, Dual, Gray
amzn.to/3gjrNIf
Flexon 5/8-Inch by 25-Foot Reinforced Garden Hose FR5825, 25ft
amzn.to/3gkiure
FLEXON 5/8-in x 50-ft Light-Duty Vinyl Green Hose
www.lowes.com/pd/FLEXON-5-8-i...
To record this video:
iPhone 8
Tripod
Acuvar 50" Inch Aluminum Camera Tripod with Quick Release + Universal Smartphone Mount for iPhone 11 Pro, 11 Pro Max, Xs, SE 2, Xr, X, 8, 8+, Pixel 3, XL, Android Note 10, S10, S20 & More Smartphones
amzn.to/3gkwZeH - Навчання та стиль
Thanks for the video. Everything seems difficult until you actually do it yourself. I appreciate your experience and great online presence!
Thank you so much for your kind words!!! I wish you luck with your garden!
Good vid❤️. Liked that you explained the timers, never used them so it was a real plus😀
You are so welcome!!! Glad it helped!
Thanks for sharing! I searched soaker hose systems and yours came up.
Glad I could help!
I found your video quite helpful as I didn't want to have to cut the hose
I am glad it helped! Good luck with your garden!
NIce , I been watching other videos and some make them look so complicated, this one is so simple in a good way :)
thanks for sharing . now I have better idea how to do mine.
I am so glad this video helped you! Good luck with your garden! Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment.
This was a very useful video. Gardening made easy promotes needed maintenance so that you can have time to do the weeding.
2 thumbs up from Greenville.
Yes!! This gives me more time to tend to the garden!!
Beautiful piece of land, great vid....didn't realize they made such hose that permeates the water...cool!
Thank you! I love it here! The soaker hose really is a game changer for watering the garden. It saves me time, and the water gets to the roots so it isn't just evaporated!
Thanks for explaining the regulator. I was about to remove it so would drop faster 😂
Glad it helped!!!!!
Very good explanation.
Thank you!! Good luck with your gardening!!
Helpful video as I need an easy method for watering vegetables, and to get it up and running quickly. Hope to find these products ASAP. Thank you!
I am so glad this helped you! I really like having the soaker hose and timer, it really saves time and makes sure my plants have the right amount of water to grow!!! Thanks for watching!
Thank you for the time stamp!
You are very welcome. I hope it was helpful and good luck gardening!
I enjoyed your video. You were good at explaining how to assemble a garden hose and showing how it works. I've seen videos where the person explains well but the camera is not focused at where it is supposed to. Is covering the soaker hose a must?
Hi there! Thank you for the comment. It is not necessary to cover to soaker hose with soil or mulch.. I have it covered in some spots and showing in others. I think that if it is buried in the soil the water is less likely to evaporate and are more likely to reach the roots.
Great video
Thank you!!
I am so glad to have found your channel and enjoyed the first video I've watched. I am a first time user. I was trying to discern where you placed your hose on the plants or seeds. Are your seeds under the darker area of soil and you placed your hose on top of them or are the plantings in the lighter colored soil and the hose drips down to them? Thank you for any help and look forward to many more of your videos.
Welcome!!! I am so glad it was helpful!! For my seeds, they are planted in the the darker soil. The darker soil is compost soil and manure mixture that I place where I am planting. So I plant my seeds, then I place the soaker hose as close to the seeds without covering the seeds. As they sprout I adjust the hose to be close to them as possible without crushing them. Then after the seedling is a bit bigger I bury the hose in the soil right next to the seedling. Hope this helps! Once it warms up here in the northeast I will get my garden started and record more of it!
So with your timers then, you leave your faucet on all the time so it can kick on by your setting?
Yes. I turn my faucet on one quarter to one half turn and leave it on. The timer has a valve that is closed when off and open when on. Hope this helps.
Learned a lot by watching your video! Two questions ... can one timer be set to automatically handle two separate soaking hoses. I have two separate islands of plants that are separated by a patch of lawn. Also, is there a maximum for how long one continuous soaker hose can be? Yours seems to be way more than 100 feet which I would like to do if that is feasible. Thank you!
Thank you so much for your kind words. YES I have my timers set to handle two separate soaker hoses, as long as your timer supports two hoses. I set up the timer to the faucet, attach two separate garden hoses, and those hoses go to different parts of my garden with the soaker hoses attached. I am not sure what the maximum length for a soaker hose. I always do a test run before winding it around my plants. So I estimate how long I want it, attach two together if needed, attach any T joints, then hook it up to my faucet and test it. I make sure the water gets to the end of the soaker hose. IF it takes a long time, I consider that when watering, meaning if it takes 2 minutes to get to the last plant because I made a long hose, then I want to make sure that I am ok with my plant getting my timer setting minus two minutes. Good luck to you! Thank you for watching and commenting.
We enjoyed your video & it was very helpful. How often throughout the day should you water with a soaker hose & for how long.
Glad this video was helpful. Right now I have each hose running for 15 minutes early in the morning. Hose 1 at 4:00am for 15 minutes, hose 2 at 4:45 am for 15 min etc. As the summer gets hotter I will adjust the time. Last summer I watered 7 minutes in the evening and 10 min in early morning. If we have a ton of rain, then I will press the rain delay button. Right now where I am, we are in a bit of a dry spell, so I might increase the watering time to twice a day (15 min early morning and maybe 5-10 early evening) especially on the hoses I have seeds.
Thank you for this video! Do you ever have leaks in the system?
You are welcome! Great question!!!! YES I have had leaks in older soaker hoses, ones that I have used for a few years. I have NEVER had a leak in a brand new hose for the first year.. If the older used hose springs a "leak" it is more like they shoot out a very fine mist of water. As long as the leak is not impacting the entire system I just leave it alone and let them spray at some plant, usually I will place a potted plant to catch the spray. If the leak is HUGE and making puddles etc, I will cut that piece of hose off and use a hose attachment to join the pieces. Once it gets warmer here in the Northeast and I set up my system I can do a video on the leaks. Hope this helps!
Hi. New subscriber here. Very thorough explanation. Good informative video. Where in North East are you located?
Thanks for the sub! I really enjoy gardening!!
Anybody knows what is the pressure needed in PSI?
In a lot of videos they mention to use a "quarter of a turn" of pressure,
but that is referenced to the pressure of the local water coming in.
Would be good to know the pressure and even to use a pressure reducer if needed.
I do not know the pressure reading. I turn it just a little, then go and look at the hose to see if the water is dripping all the way to the end. If the water is not dripping, I turn it a little more and just adjust the flow. I then leave my faucet turned at that amount since I use a timer. Sorry I don’t know the actual pressure reading.
How long do you run water and how often. Also do you turn faucet on full blast.
Hello! In the spring I run my hose using my timers 10 minutes twice a day. I increase that in the summer to 15 minutes twice a day. I set my timers to water at 4am and 6pm. I do not turn faucet full blast, it only needs to be about a quarter turn. I test it out, just a trickle works well. Good luck with your gardening!! Thank you for watching!
You said you are in the northeast. Do you leave everything out all winter? I’m in Massachusetts zone 6B.
Hello!! Once the cool fall air arrives, I do my big clean up. I pull the last of my carrots, pull out any remaining greens, and cut & mulch the irises. I dry out my soaker hoses, by detaching them from the hose, and laying them in the sun for a few days, then I place them in a storage bin in my shed. The water hoses also get emptied, dried, and stored in my shed. I bring inside the water timers, remove their batteries, and keep them in a box in my boiler room until the spring! I try to get all my hoses away before the first night freeze. Great question! Thanks for asking and thank you for watching!
How long is suggested for running the water timer? I am new to gardening and I purchased a system but unsure how long to set timer for. 30 min every morning, an hour?? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
I run my hose about 10 minutes 2 times a day in the spring time, I might increase it to 15 minutes if the summer heat is drying out my soil. I think the best thing to do is set it for something and check the soil. If it is too dry, increase time or add a 3rd watering. If it is too wet then decrease the amount of watering.
I usually set mine up to run around 4am and 6pm. Occasionally in super hot summer weather I need to add an extra watering.
What type of timer did you get? I can try to help you figure out settings if I know they type.
New sub here! Excellent video! I haven't set up a soaker hose yet but I'm researching to see what possible challenges there are vs a drip system. One of the problems I've read is people have complained the water won't go any farther than 10' with a soaker. Someone made a video of a loop system to a green house but looked a little too complicated. So... my question is, since yours is pretty long is there any issue with the water getting all the way to the end? Do they hose itself ever get clogged with dirt? I want to use a garden water filter since our water tastes and smells horrible from chlorine etc. Any advice you'd give on where it should go, like close to where water comes out of the faucet or closer to the soaker hose in connection point where the soaker near the garden? Water hose diameter, 1/2" or 3/4"? Whew! Thank you any help you can give. Have a blessed day
Hi Adrian! Thanks for the sub! I have had no problems getting water to the end of my soaker hose. What I do is adjust the flow from the faucet until I see it get through the entire hose. So I will turn the faucet a little, then walk the hose and note the dripping, if the hose isn’t dripping then I will turn up the faucet a bit more and check. I continue adjusting the faucet until I like the flow out of the soaker hose. My soaker hoses are long, probably 50 ft or more even… and I haven’t had any issues. There have been hoses that “soak” better than others, and I have noticed that the newer hoses soak better than ones that I use year after year. I have “retired” hoses that do not flow well after a few years of use. Also, my hoses have never gotten clogged with dirt. I don’t have experience with a water filter at the faucet, but we have well water, and do have a water filtration system but it is after our expansion tank in our boiler room. I am not sure what you could use for a more point of service filter at the outside faucet. I don’t know if they make an outdoor Brita Filter … you could always install an in home water filtration system that impacts all of your water, but that could be costly. I will have to check our hose diameter…. It is just a regular garden hose… and not sure what that measurement is. Good luck with your garden!
@@FieldOfFocus Thank you so much for responding and taking the time to answer in such detail. It’s greatly appreciated! So glad I found your YT channel
I have a 4 hose melnor timer.
How is that timer working for you?
How many feet total of hose is in your potato bed? I'm wondering because I'm having trouble getting water to the end portion of my soaker hoses. I have a very long system. Also wondering how far your source water is from the potato bed. Thanks
I think I have 75-100 feet of soaker hose in my potato bed. And the distance from my hose bib to the soaker hose is about 70ft. After reusing my soaker hoses for a few years I noticed they weren’t getting water all the way through. So every 2-3 years I replace my soaker hoses. Have you tried adjusting the pressure from a trickle to a quarter turn?
@@FieldOfFocus thanks for your response. 🙂 The hoses that I have are sold as professional grade so heavy duty I suppose. The details for the hoses claims that max 1000ft of hose can be run with no problem for them to soak out evenly at 10psi water pressure. I have 11 50 ft hoses (550 ft) connected together but even on low pressure only the 1st 6 will soak out. My garden is all one level for the most part so I don't think elevation is the issue.
My hose from the bib to the 1st soaker hose is about 25 feet.
I'm planning to break them up into 3 or 4 zones and try that even though they advertise that the max length can be 1000ft.
The other option I have seen is a closed loop system where they put a soaker hose and a regular hose end to end coming off a "Y" hose end to "loop" the water continuously. That increases the cost though because for every soaker hose you need a matching length regular hose.
Hoping to find a solution.
Oooh I agree that the best solution is to break them up into 3 or 4 zones. I do have 4 zones for my garden. I have two timers which each have two hose attachments. I spend more on regular garden hoses instead of having one.. but I did it because different plants had different needs for watering. Once it gets worked out it will be soooo good for your garden. Keep me posted.
Do you need more than one main hose attached to the soaker hose?
The number of hoses you will need will depends on how far away your outdoor spigot is and your garden is. I needed two hoses to reach from my house spigot to the garden. I also wanted watering timers to be different, so I had 3 different main hoses, going to 3 different soaker hoses in different spots in my garden.
@@FieldOfFocus thanks. I just bought 3 soaker hose and a timer and set them up. Your video helped me a lot.
@@yariale8 I am so happy my video helped you!! Good luck!!!!
Do the water timers run on batteries?
If so,, how long can one expect the batteries to last?
Yes. They run on AA batteries. I have had one pair of batteries for the three summers I have used the timers. I do think I will use fresh batteries this summer. Good luck with your gardening!
@@FieldOfFocus thank you.
Got one. Setting in up tomorrow in Florida
@@mitchhagee1800 Good luck! Being in Florida you have a much longer growing season than me in the northeast!!!
Are timers battery operated?
The timers that I have are battery operated. Thanks for watching!
Thats some accent you have there.
That it is!