I know this sounds a little obsessive and quirky but I learned to water from my mother when I was a child and her method was to take a ladle full or two of water out of bucket kept near the garden and carefully pour it onto the roots of the plant each morning.

Supposedly it was to serve two purposes...

1. The water, being warmed by the sun, allows all the chlorine and fluorine to evaporate off and is less likely to shock the plants.

2. Since only the roots need water, not the leaves, you waste less water and reduce the risk of damaging (sun-burning, disease, etc.) the plant...

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In your situation, if giving the choice between watering every day via the sprinkler and occasionally over watering them or not watering them every day but watering them by hand, I would go with the watering by hand option. It'll also give you a better opportunity to inspect the plant's general health and progress as well as the ability to weed more frequently while there still small little sproutlets... ;-p

I think I like the watering idea better for a smaller personal garden and that is what I have been doing now (well of course mine are still containers) and I am hoping to start on that raised bed this weekend. But once i get that out I will contiue hand watering. I do alot of what I call "spot watering" for my flowers that are in the ground. I even have a soaker hose around my front flower bed.

However I have never even thought about leaving the water out already. Thats a good concept. Have you notice that causing an problems with an excess of mosiquitos because of the water bucket?

I water my vegetable garden with soaker hoses about once to twice per week (depending on whether it rains). My garden produced enough for 4 or 5 families last year.

I think the water without the chlorine and fluorine would be great, but I'd need an aweful big bucket and Hercules to carry it around for me.

BTW, there are timers you can purchase to automatically shut your water off. You can get the self contained ones that screw right on to the faucet. You don't need tools to install them and they don't have to be wired or plumbed in. Below is a link with some examples.

Here is a link that might be useful: Examples of Faucet Timers

Up in michigan they joke that the mosquito is the state bird. I'm starting to learn that every state makes that joke, lol...

If you had a problem with bugs because of the standing water, put a lid on it. HD & Lowes sell lids for their 5-gallon buckets for around $3.00 USD each and having a lid on it will not prevent the chlorine and fluorine from evaporating off the water. Simply having the water heated and exposed to a light-source for a couple hours is all that's needed.

I HOPE/PLAN/INTEND on creating several rain barrel this year however in order to get the barrels made I need to rent a pickup truck to um, pick them up as I appear to be the only person in this state who doesn't have a relative,friend, etc. that I can borrow one from. Every time I need something larger than will fit in my sub-compact Toyota Echo I run into this problem. Building my raised beds and trellises (out of cattle fencing) this year was a ROYAL PITA because of that...

Makes me cry a little inside. On one hand, I love the fact that my car, with over 158,000 miles still gets about 400 miles to a 12 gallon tank - except when i have to pay $100 to rent a pickup for a day or two just to buy materials.

Thanks everyone for all your suggestions.I'm going to check out where I can get one of those barrels for rain water.

yeah with great gas milage like that it most definatly pans out better in the end!