How to automate your garden watering on a small budget

Keeping a garden watered properly is the job that quietly beats most people, because it has to happen whether or not you're home, and hand watering is the first thing to go in a busy week. Automating it isn't only for people with a big setup and a bigger budget, and it's a lot simpler than it sounds.

Why bother automating it

Hand watering is satisfying and it's also the reason half the garden dies in January. With something automatic running you'll:

  • Get the water on at the right time of day, which is early morning, not when you happen to remember.
  • Put the same amount on every time, which is what plants actually want.
  • Stop the hose running for an hour because you walked off and forgot it.
  • Go away for a weekend without coming home to a disaster.

Start with a soaker hose

If this is all new, a soaker hose is the easiest thing to start with. It's a hose that weeps water slowly along its whole length, straight into the soil where the roots are, instead of throwing it into the air where a fair bit of it evaporates before it lands.

Lay it around the base of your plants, connect it to the tap, and you're most of the way there. Add a tap timer on the end of the tap and the job is done without you.

Worth knowing

If you've got a mix of veggies, flowers and shrubs, run more than one soaker hose off a splitter at the tap. That way you can water the thirsty beds for longer without drowning the ones that don't want it.

Dripline, when you want it accurate

The step up from a soaker hose is inline dripline. It's poly pipe with emitters built in at set spacings, each one dropping water at a known rate, usually 2 litres an hour. That means you can work out how long to run it instead of guessing.

It suits garden beds, veggie patches and rows of pots, and it's not the fiddly job people expect. You cut it to length, peg it down with hold down stakes, and join it with barbed fittings. A pair of scissors and half an afternoon covers most backyards.

Worth knowing

Put an inline filter between the tap and the dripline. Drippers block up on grit and a filter is far cheaper than pulling the whole run apart later.

Tap timers do the actual automating

The timer is the part that turns a watering system into an automatic one, and a basic battery tap timer is all most gardens need. You set the start time and the run length and it does that every day until you change it.

Mechanical wind up timers are the other option and they're worth knowing about, because they need no battery at all. You give the dial a twist and it shuts the water off after the set time, which solves the forgotten hose problem on its own.

Free water off the roof

If you've got a rain water tank, you can run a gravity fed line straight off it into a soaker hose or dripline with no power and no pump involved. It runs at low pressure, so keep the runs short and the beds close, and it costs you nothing to use.

Worth knowing

Keep any open water covered so it doesn't breed mosquitoes, and flush the line out now and then, because tank water carries more sediment than mains water does.

Cheap tricks that genuinely work

  • Bottle drippers. Punch a few small holes in a plastic bottle, bury it neck down beside the roots, and fill it. It waters slowly and deeply while you're at work.
  • An old hose. A hose that has had its day can be pierced every 30cm and turned into a soaker hose for nothing.
  • Bucket and dripper. A bucket up on a milk crate with a dripper line out the bottom will keep a few pots alive over a weekend.

Then check on it

An automatic system will happily keep running while something is blocked, so walk the line every few weeks and watch the water actually come out. Look for drippers that have stopped, kinks in the pipe, and wet patches where a fitting has let go. Five minutes now and then is all it takes.

Shop related products

Did you know we also stock Pope and Brunnings soaker hoses, 13mm inline filters, precision drippers and rigid pipe stakes in the shop. Not all of it is listed online, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.

The rest of the watering gear is in the garden centre, and if you bring in a rough sketch of the bed we'll work out what you need.

More from the garden

Nobody starts out knowing how any of this goes together, and the people who make it look easy have just done it more times. Ask me in the shop, I'm usually there.

Cheers,
Candeece

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