Soaker hose /drip watering. How do you renew compost.

When you have soaker hose or drip watering setup on raised beds. So you have to move all of it at start of next season to renew some of the compost.soil.

Currently manually water because of reservations about using irrigation and having to move it all. How does anyone get round this.

 

Hi,

Don't think everyone replaces the soil in raised beds each year, sounds very wasteful.

What size and how many raised beds are you talking about ?

Generally its a case of adding a layer of good compost/ manure each year and letting the worms etc take it down into the soil, along with crop rotation as @JWK mentions.

Raised beds do need more watering as its so much more free draining, but is manually watering such a chore if you only have a few smaller beds ?
We find manually watering keeps you more in touch with the plants/crops/pests/soil.

 

Hi.

Thanks for your response

As i mentioned i said renew "some" of the compost not all.And yes understand the benefits of manual watering in concerns of monitoring the soil and plants. I currently have a small amount of raised beds. 7 4x4ft beds that hold around 600l compost each. I work away from home at periods and need to think about a more automated approach at times. Just wondered i guess if anyone thought that drip lines or soaker hoses interfered with attending to the bed when changing soil and so forth.