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How to Use a Soaker Hose

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Soaker hoses are a great way to water your vegetable garden. What is a soaker hose? It’s a hose that has tiny holes or pores along its length. Water drips or squirts out from the holes directly onto the soil near the plant’s roots. You can use soaker hoses with annuals, perennials, vegetables, trees – anywhere you need irrigation for your garden. I use soaker hoses exclusively in the vegetable garden, and they’re both a time and water-saver to help me grow health vegetables.
 

 

How to Use a Soaker Hose

First thing first: don’t try to convert an existing hose into a soaker hose. You’ll make yourself crazy, ruin a good hose, and probably make a lousy soaker hose. Purchase a good-quality soaker hose at your local garden center. They’re not too expensive, and they last for years with proper care.


Soaker hoses come with an end cap, which keeps the water from running back out into the garden. You’ll want to purchase snap-on hose connectors. These gadgets are a life saver for me! I probably wouldn’t water my garden as frequently if I didn’t have these little gadgets on the ends of the hoses. One tip: buy metal ones. The plastic ones are a lot less expensive, but never last for more than a season. The snap-on gadgets screw onto each end of the hose. Then, instead of fussing with screwing the hose on each time you want to water the gadget, you just pull back the ring, insert the end of the hose, and push the ring back into place. Instant connection. 
 
Snap-on coupling on the end of my soaker hose makes it easy to move the main hose to each vegetable bed.

You will need landscape fabric pins to help hold the soaker hose in place. I make my own from metal coat hangers that seems to multiply like rabbits in the dark recesses of my closet. Actually, they’re coat hangers from the dry cleaners; I always have too many lurking about. Instead of throwing them out, I use wire cutters and snip off the loop at the top. Then I cut them into about 6 to 8 inch lengths and bend them into U-shaped pins. They’re fine to hold soaker hoses in place. You just place the bend of the U over the hose and gently push it into the ground to hold the hose near the plants.
Wind your soaker hose around the plants at the drip line, as you can see in my photo here. This is my raised bed vegetable garden, and the hose is around the tomato plants:
Tomato plants with soaker hose.

I had a little bit of hose left over at the end, so the lucky tomato plant in the lower left corner will get extra water. I wind the hose around the plants. It would better to loop it at the drip line, like the last plant, but my method works just fine.  The drip line is the area around the plant where the leaves extend. Imagine the canopy of the plant like an umbrella. Think of how water drips off the ends of an umbrella; that’s the drip line. The plants’ roots generally extend under the canopy of leaves to the edge of the drip line, so you want the water concentrated underneath that imaginary umbrella. Now of course, these tomato plants will grow, and as they grow, so does their drip line. I’ll adjust the hose in a month or two if it needs it.
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I usually attach the main hose to each soaker hose and run it for half an hour into the garden bed. I use the kitchen timer so that I can work, read or cook dinner (as long as I don’t need the timer for dinner, that is!) while the water is running.
 

Benefits of Using Soaker Hoses
What are the benefits of using soaker hoses? 
  • Conserve water! I have a well on my property, and water conservation is important. I don’t want to drain my well dry just to grow plants. The soaker hose uses less water to irrigate the garden more efficient than other systems.
  • You’re watering your vegetables, not the weeds.  When you run a sprinkler or the hose, you always water the soil between the plants as well as the plants themselves. So basically, you’re irrigating weed seeds along with your plants. The soaker hose concentrates water near the roots while the remaining soil stays dry. Starve those weeds!
  • Less water evaporates during your irrigation time than with a sprinkler. We use to run a sprinkler that covered half of the vegetable garden, then move it to the other half. Not only did we lose a lot of water to evaporation on a hot day, but we watered the leaves (unnecessary) and the grass paths (yay! more to mow – NOT).  The soaker hose keeps the water where it’s beneficial; near the roots of thirsty plants.
No matter how much you try to water plants directly with the hose, it can be difficult to make sure that all of your plants get enough water. With a soaker hose, you’ve got an easy and efficient system to water all of the garden.
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You can buy soaker hoses at your local garden center, hardware store, Wal-Mart, Lowe’s or Home Depot.

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Comments

  1. Gardener on Sherlock Street

    Soaker hoses are great. I have a lot of them and have learned how to use those mending connectors when I’ve accidently stuck a shovel through one and needed it fixed. I should invest in the quick release attachments. That would be a big help!

  2. Retha Handa

    I can’t recommend Walmart soaker hoses. Mine became brittle within the first six months. If I even bumped them with a hand tool, they split. This year I bought them from Home Depot. It’s discouraging to try to save water, but then waste natural resources by having to throw away soaker hoses that can’t be repaired!

  3. Jamie

    Great tips!! I do this every year, and it make sit so much easier to care for the garden! #HomeMattersParty

  4. Kim

    Oh yay, I most definitely need to pin this and use slacker hoses in my garden this year. Thanks so much for sharing! #HomeMattersParty

  5. Crystal

    I learn so much from your blog! I have started out with a tiny garden this year so I probably won’t need a soaker hose but will save for my future dream garden! #HomeMattersParty

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