How to Use a Soaker Hose: 4 Tips to Grow Healthy Plants

By
Nora Held
Nora Held
Research Writer
Apart from being our main writer, Nora also works for a number of gardening-related sites and magazines, sharing her experience as an owner of a small farm in North Carolina read more
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Reviewed By
Bruce Williams
Bruce Williams
Expert Consultant
Bruce owns a small farm and loves to grill since his early childhood. He’s a professional cook, but hiking and enjoying the great outdoors is his no less favorite part of read more
Last updated: August 24, 2023
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Once in a while, you can find a garden product that makes your life so much easier. In this guide, we’re exploring how to use a soaker hose in your garden, covering the benefits, and how to install a soaker hose in a way that can be really effective for your plants. Soaker hose gardening is being adopted by more and more people as they realise the benefits of this type of system. As well as being an effective way to irrigate and get moisture into your plants, it also has some other benefits, particularly if you live in an area where you need to protect and conserve water. A soaker hose is an amazing way to do this without sacrificing your yard or your plant health in the process. They can also save you a lot of time and make your gardening process easier.

What soaker hose does for your garden

How to Use a Soaker Hose: 4 Tips to Grow Healthy PlantsSo, what does a soaker hose actually do for your garden? Luckily, we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to garden hoses, and some of the very best hoses can be set up in a way to conserve water. A soaker hose is a way to automatically save on water, by slowly dripping the water you need out of the hose and not using excessive amounts.

In short, a soaker hose provides a slow and steady supply of water to the plants in your garden that need this. Whether you are researching how to use a soaker hose in a vegetable garden or you just want to keep the plants in your border hydrated, these hoses are an option.

Because there isn’t lots of water getting wasted by sprinkling it where it isn’t strictly needed or accidentally overwatering plants, it’s also great to conserve water. Used with a hose timer, it’s even better for keeping your water usage to a minimum. This way, the water will only kick in at certain times during the day and gradually drip through.

Soaker hoses have lots of other benefits that we will explore, such as leaving the soil in a brilliant condition by not disturbing it during the watering process.

Choosing place for a soaker hose

How to Use a Soaker Hose: 4 Tips to Grow Healthy Plants

How to use a soaker hose in the garden and make sure you get the most out of it? Install it in the right place. When people put sprinkler systems in their yard or even rely on watering manually, they don’t often think too much about the placing. It doesn’t matter that much if you know that a lot of water is going to spray out. However, the idea with a soaker hose is that it gradually drips through, so you should target the hose in the places where you know water is going to be required.

The best placing is to be snaked around the plants you are trying to keep moist. This means that you can place the hose near to the roots. You should have lots of space to fit the hose in the areas where it is needed. The Flexon WS100KITCN is an example of a hose that gives you over 100 feet of length to play with. By placing near the roots you ensure that the moisture reaches the plants in the exact area required, rather than worrying that it is spraying leaves but never really making it to the actual root of the plant. This is something that many sprinklers do. Large, expandable hoses mean that your garden soaker hose layout can cover huge lengths of the yard and that you don’t have to worry about uncovered areas not getting any moisture coming through.

How to install soaker hose

How to install a soaker hose in the most efficient way possible? Installation is relatively quick and easy for the majority of hoses.

If it is new, you need to unwind it and leave it somewhere for a while. This means the coil becomes looser and you can place the hose in a much more easy and efficient way rather than fighting kinks in the hose. The BUYOOKAY Soaker Hose is nice and flexible so you should be able to quickly set it up in the shape and pattern you want.

Next, you should hook it up to the water source you will be using and then flush out the hose, you can do this to get rid of any debris and check all the areas are dispensing water as they’re needed.

You can connect the hose directly to the faucet if it is close enough. If not, an extendable hose can be run to the soaker hose so that the water reaches.

Place your hose in the desired area, and turn the water on to ensure that it is gradually dripping.

In terms of placement, this is down to your judgement. If your setup is not orthodox like rows of plants or a line of plants, or even a planter full of vegetables or other flowers, you just need to make sure water is getting close to the roots of the plants. Snaking the hose around in a way that provides a full coverage is a good way to evenly spread the water coming from within.

Tips on using soaker hose

Below, we’ve got some brilliant tips on how to use a soaker hose to try and get the most out of your garden and to do so in the most efficient way.

No weeds

One of the big benefits of using a soaker hose, and one that many do not realise, is that it is a great way to reduce the prevalence of weeds in your yard. If you are using a sprinkler system or even watering manually, it’s likely that a lot of the water will go to areas where weeds could grow and fuel their potential growth. A soaker hose means you can just target the plants you do want to grow, and not feed the weeds in the process.

Growing strong

How to Use a Soaker Hose: 4 Tips to Grow Healthy PlantsBy ensuring that the water and nutrients are getting to the root of the plant, you are helping the plants to grow strong and even increasing the growing rate. Many people are using soaker hoses to great effect when it comes to building strong gardens full of beautiful plants, or even stronger fruit and vegetables.

Water conservation

Water conservation Trusted Source Water conservation - Wikipedia Water conservation includes all the policies, strategies and activities to sustainably manage the natural resource of fresh water, to protect the hydrosphere, and to meet the current and future human demand. en.wikipedia.org is critical in the US. It is not a limitless resource and only so much can be produced and treated to allow us to use it. We need water for other things, too! In many areas, there are bans or restrictions on your use of hoses or water on certain times and certain days, to ensure that there is plenty to go around. So you can see why soaker hoses are becoming so popular. There are estimates that say you can get the same level of moisture to your plants, whilst using 30-50% less water. This also saves on your bills, so it is a win/win in terms of your wallet and your environmental impact.

Saving time

If you can leave your soaker hose out in your plant display, border, or growing box, then you can simply turn a faucet on or off as a way to water up to 100 feet of plants! That’s an incredibly efficient way of getting water to all of your plants without having to walk around spraying them manually. Irrigating your plants doesn’t have to be a pain at all if you are able to just turn on the faucet and let the water spread evenly.

How to use a soaker hose in a vegetable garden

If you are exploring how to set up a soaker hose system in a vegetable garden, the produce within might be simply set up in rows so that you can get equal moisture to the roots and help them to grow.

If you plan to use a soaker hose then you might actually create a specific plan for planting in a way that lends itself to this method. You could, for instance, plant in longer strips, so that you can line the soaker hose all the way along the plants.

Final thoughts

Some people don’t even realise that a soaker hose is such an efficient way of watering the plants. Sales of these products are growing, as more people wake up to the fact that they are really efficient, but also that they can allow you to create less of an effect on the environment and even save you money on the water bills. Knowing how to use a soaker hose effectively is essential, as they do have to be positioned properly. to allow you to get water to all of your plants, if you make a mistake, one of your plants might not be getting all the water it needs. Set up correctly, though, and you’ll wonder why you ever bothered with other sprinklers and irrigation systems.

References

1.
Water conservation - Wikipedia
Water conservation includes all the policies, strategies and activities to sustainably manage the natural resource of fresh water, to protect the hydrosphere, and to meet the current and future human demand.

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