Automatic watering system

Hi,

I'm planning a 2 week holiday in the summer and don't know my neighbours well enough to ask them to come and water my garden. As I don't want all my hard work this year to go to waste, so have 3 options; 1) keep my fingers crossed and prey for rain, 2)Pay someone to drop by and do it, or 3)get some sort of watering irrigation system in. Does anyone here have any experience with option 3 that they could share? I don't have a very large garden (10m by 5m approx. with one long thin side bed and one squarish end bed) and have seen pipe-based systems in homebase, but am not sure if these are any good.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Fyfy

 

I wouldn't worry. Just give it a good soak before you go, unless you have containers?

 

Oh really? I thought my plants would die if left without water for so long (ok being VERY optimistic about the british summer, but you never know). They've only just been planted this year so are not established. Would it be ok to risk 2 weeks away with no watering system in place?

 

Oh, and no containers. Just a very new garden to fuss over!

 

If you have young plants, then just give them a good soaking a couple of times before you go, and I'm sure they'll be fine

 

You can prepare the garden before you go. Deadhead and cut back any flowers/fruit that may go over, give everything a good soak and move any containers to a shady part of the garden if you can so that water doesn't evaporate if it gets really hot. If you have anything which requires you to deal with it every day you may need to get someone in to check. I usually ask friends to keep a general eye and make sure they have a key and know where hoses are and ask them to step in only if there's extreme weather.

Put a day in your diary during the week before and the week after your holiday and I've no doubt it will be none the worse.

With regard to watering systems, I've used capillary matting in the past but I wouldn't be confident enough to leave a watering system running for two weeks if I wasn't there. I have put in soaker hoses under my main beds to encourage deeper rooting and I'll be giving the soil a really good soak with those but as this is the first year I've done it I won't know whether it will work.

 

Give the garden a good mulching as well will slow down the water loss considerably, if we do happen to have a hot period while you are away.

 

Thanks all, i've calmed down a bit about this now. I think i'll do the mulching unless we're having a real scorcher of a summer (not holding my breath for that!).