MrToad, please show EVERYONE your potager!!!
People this is INCREDIBLE! You need to see all the work Mrtoad has done!!

GGG

I use soaker hoses in the beds, except for the raised vegie beds. They are small enough that I just keep a 5 gallon bucket next to them, and water with a cup!.

I mulch very heavily with newspaper and assorted other mulches over that. Hand watering, on only a select few plants, is done less that once a month and then very deeply.

I am considering soaker hoses for certain areas though. DH is becoming a tiny bit more interested in my garden so he might be willing to monitor drip hoses when I am out of town.

Until about mid-June I water everything by hand (with the hose) at ground level. I have one of those wands that makes the job a little easier. After that point the heat & humidity make watering a miserable task, even early in the day, so I resort to the overhead sprinkler for the rest of the summer. One of the benefits of hand-watering is seeing your plants up close and catching potential problems (bad insects/diseases) early.

Dh has mentioned creating a drip system for the new garden. We'll see.

Harper

My potager is in process . . . I'll probably also use soaker
hoses set on a timer.

Gurley, your DH sounds like my DH . . . god love'em. This
past weekend I was roto-tilling and leveling the area of
my future potager. DH was standing outside watching me the
whole time. My neighbor came over and gave DH a beer, said
he looked so tired and a man needs to have a beer while
working. Sheezz! we both had a good laugh over that. Next
day my muscles were sooooo sore. I am so out of shape.

I have a drip system on an automatic timer and love it! There are a large variety of drip line configurations to fit your needs, there are even mini-sprayers with adjustable heads. DH & I put ours together from 1/4 inch tubing and used parts available at Home Depot and Lowes stores. If you have regular automatic sprinklers, it is easy to connect a 1/2 inch flexible hose and connect a 1/4 inch system to it. There is a book by Ortho "All About Sprinklers and Drip Systems" that we found helpful. Hope this helps.

Becky

Thanks Becky for the suggestion about hooking up a drip system to an automatic sprinkler system. Our sprinkler system was already in place when we (I should say my DH) put in our potager. I had an irrigation company raise the sprinkler heads that were inside the potager to 3 feet last spring but I still was unhappy with the wasted water on the paths. Previously I hand watered with a hose. I don't mind doing that because like Harper says, you can weed and pick off critters and keep a check on things this way. The problem with that method was when I was out of town it didn't get watered well. I will check out the Ortho book.

I use soaker hoses in my potager. The soaker hoses put the water right at the feet of the plants and can be moved to accommodate the changes in size of plants as the seasons progress. The water comes out slowly and evenly, with little if any waste. Also, by putting the water at the base of the plants, the issue of pests and diseases is minimal. In my 16 years gardening here, I've only had the occasional tomato worm, and I haven't even had those in the last several years. ( I think it's the compost ) : )

My DH has the soaker hoses hooked to the automatic watering system and on timers. It's wonderful not worrying about watering - allows me more time to plant and play. : ) In general, I have the potager hoses go 15 min. twice a day in the summer when our temps get into the 80's; otherwise, they only go once a day.

The soaker hoses last about 3-5 years in my very dry, mile high climate. I do not bury them, just lay them on top of the soil with a very light mulch in fall/winter.

Diana

I use a drip irrigation system with soaker dripline. On a timer, about 30-40 minutes, two to three times a week during the hot weather. Instead of a single 40-minute burst, I let them run 5-10 minutes at hourly intervals from about 4 to 7 am. That lets the soil absorb the water between bursts and reduces runoff and pooling, a problem in my clay soil.

Like Diana, I just lay them on the soil and mulch lightly. Especially thirsty perennials get a loop. Separate lengths run to the containers on the border, which I generally (except for mint!) keep buried in soil.

For those of you that use soaker hoses...how do you handle where they cross the paths, so that you don't waste water and turn the path into mud?

I used soaker hoses on a timer in my old everything-in-rows vegetable garden and loved them, but I just can't figure out how to do the same thing in the potager with separated raised beds that I'm in the process of mentally designing.

Well, I live in Texas and summer temps can hit 110 here, so water is an ongoing strategy. heres my take:

1. humus/compost/leaves - this stuff acts a sponge, so I try to top dress throughout the year and work in extra where I see there is an issue with a bed

2. I mulch with cardboard and a thick, thick layer of alfa alfa hay (coastal in my area is typically high in herbicides)

3. I try to group plants according to water needs, so no one thing works for my garden. after much fustration, I now have a "y" splitter on my main spigot. One side goes to a regular garden hose hose, the other end is hooked to a length of hose that is hooked to a length of pvc pipe I wired to the potager fence. This pvc pipe is hooked into 2 sets of zinc 4-ways (this gives me 8 spigots with on/off controls). I cut up chunks of hose to run from the 4 ways to each bed using hose repair kits. My paths are broken counter top pieces from a local countertop wholesaler, so the hose fits nicely in between the stones.

My beds are a mix of everything: soaker hoses, drip irrigation, and pvc pipe "u"s with holes drilled in them. The nice thing is I can swap out what I need for a bed in the spring and hook it up to a hose without ripping the entire system apart. Then I can turn on the valve to that bed and water it without having to water everything.

The downside is I am the only who can water the garden, unless I draw people complicated diagrams of which spigot runs to which area!

My paths are broken counter top pieces from a local countertop wholesaler, so the hose fits nicely in between the stones.

This sounds so interesting! Do you have a picture?
Are they large pieces? Do they get slippery when it rains? (don't know how much rain you get)Did the countertop Co charge you for the pieces? What do you have between them? Pea gravel?
I have old carpet down waiting for gravel or wood chips or something to go in soon. I haven't decided what yet. I like odd things in my garden! I love people to stop and say "wow" Nancy

The countertop place lets contractors toss their scraps in the bins in back. I asked and they said the crazy lady could take whatever she wanted. I have a van, but it took a lot of trips over several months - marble and granite is heavy!

I orginally laid down heavy appliance cardboard and put the pieces on top of it. Currently I am going back and redoing sections with black landscape plastic as I have time. I have tried a lot of paths and for my area where its either flash flood or drought, broken counter top is cheap and keeps the mud down.

I actually flip the pieces over - the polished top of the countertops is slick when it rains, but the bottom is just cut stone, so its no different then buying flagstone.

Here is my photo album, there is a couple of photos that show the path.
html :Photobucket site

Manzo, what a cool garden. How great is it that all that is free "junk!"

If you're ever in St. Louis, I think you would love visiting the City Museum. The whole place is an amazing indoor and outdoor playground made out of old junk. I've never seen anything like it anywhere. You would love it!

Here is a link that might be useful: Cool museum

STRAW MULCH!!!!! I can only tend my garden on week-ends, so i'm the queen of EASY. I have raised beds. I buy bales of straw or hay every year for multiple uses. In the aIsles, it keeps weeds down. those that grow are EASY to pull out. Once my plants are up, I surround them with straw-Thickly. the straw HOLDS IN MOISTURE, keeps down weeds and even provides some support to taller plants as more straw is added. I hardly ever water except in drought-like conditions. the straw decomposes over time and becomes beautiful compost, so I periodically rake the "stuff" from the aisles to dump into my beds (every second year) At the end of summer, I leave the remnants of "cut and come again" lettuces in the ground and cover all beds with more straw. With this insulation, some plants will survive and be VERY EARLY salad in March or April. I also configure 5 bales in a sunny corner of the yard- 2 on each side. one in back, open in front. This is covered with black plastic, weighted with rocks, as my compost pile. As the walls begin to break down, some goes to the garden some into the compost.
For more on hay /straw bales I HIGHLY recommend "RUTH STOUT'S NO WORK GARDEN BOOK" probably out of print but check amazon and e-bay. she gardened well into her 80s the 'lazy way'.
gret