{"id":91,"date":"2014-06-09T14:50:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T14:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/homegardenjoy.com\/site\/2014\/06\/how-to-use-a-soaker-hose.html"},"modified":"2025-12-12T15:16:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T20:16:09","slug":"how-to-use-a-soaker-hose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homegardenjoy.com\/site\/2014\/06\/how-to-use-a-soaker-hose.html","title":{"rendered":"How to Use a Soaker Hose"},"content":{"rendered":"
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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.<\/center>
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How to Use a Soaker Hose<\/h1>\n

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.<\/p>\n


\nSoaker 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.\u00a0<\/center>
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Snap-on coupling on the end of my soaker hose makes it easy to move the main hose to each vegetable bed.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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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.<\/center>
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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:<\/center><\/p>\n
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Tomato plants with soaker hose.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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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. \u00a0The 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.<\/center>
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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.<\/center>
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Benefits of Using Soaker Hoses<\/strong><\/center>
What are the benefits of using soaker hoses?\u00a0<\/center><\/p>\n