Growing Food: Watering and Weeding

Now that our unexpected and unusual stretch of heavy rain is over, I am back to my usual practice of watering every other day in my garden.

Over the past four years we've been gardening here, we have learned that consolidating the garden as much as possible is one of the keys to our success, and that is because of the way we water.

I know some people here--and other places, of course--use a drip system, with timers and everything. I don't want to run all the plastic pipe through the garden, or deal with the maintenance. We tried a sprinkler a few times, but find that our very warm, dry air leads to too much evaporation and not enough water on the plants. 

As with so many other things in the garden, I go with the simplest option. In this case, a hose.

Or rather, several hoses connected together. We have three hoses connected so that we can reach all of the plants in our garden with it. On the end of the hose is a shut-off valve, so I can turn it off where I am rather than going all the way back to the actual tap. And then after the shut-off valve on the very end of the hose is a watering wand attachment. It makes a rain sort of spray with the water.

An old photo of the tiny peas getting watered with the watering wand attachment.

It's most important to have that watering attachment on the end. Without it, the flow of water is too strong and will wear away a hole right in the soil.

When I water, I just work my way around the garden, setting the hose down in each cell or trench and letting it flood that area. I leave the hose in there until there's at least an inch of standing water. 

Flooding the salad bed. That is, the tomatoes and lettuces.

I do occassionally need to move the hose in these places, because even a slight elevation in the soil will result in some plants not getting flooded. This is why I stay in the garden while I'm watering. 

It takes me about two hours to water everything thoroughly. Because I stay there to move the hose around, that means I have two hours to work in the garden as well. And "work" of course means "weed."

I do use a hoe in larger areas around the beds or between them, but I've lost a lot of plants accidentally to hoeing, so I prefer hand weeding when I'm close to the plants.

When I water is the only time the ground is soft enough to weed properly in these beds, by pulling weeds up by the roots. I weed by hand partially because my plants are spaced close together and so there isn't room for a weeding tool. But also so I can really see what I'm doing. 

If I'm right down in the bed pulling the weeds by hand, I can see the volunteers right when they come up and avoid pulling up a calendula plant that came up in the rutabagas. I can also see when the swallowtail caterpillars have arrived to decimate my dill plants, or the june bug grubs are infesting the cabbage beds.

The time and the close proximity of hand weeding are what allow me to monitor the garden closely. And the time is dictated by the time I have to be out there watering. They go together for me. I find this helpful, as it guarantees time spent weeding. 

I don't usually spend the whole two hours weeding--I take breaks to hang up laundry while I'm flooding the beds, and I usually get interrupted by children--but there's probably at least an hour or so every other day that I'm actively working in the garden.

So tell me, my fellow gardeners: How do you handle watering and weeding in your gardens?