On watering the tater tires

I've been asked about how we water our tater tires.

Here's the answer: we use soaker hoses.

The setup: We have a regular garden hose running from the house to the beginning row of tires. At the end of the regular hose, we attached a hose "splitter," with on/off valves for each connection.

To those connections, we attached 100-foot soaker hoses. We laid the soaker hoses across the tops of the tater tires.

To water the plants, we run the hoses for a couple of hours every 3-4 days. We frequently test the soil for moisture (read: stick a finger down a couple of inches into the dirt - if it's dry, then the plants need water) and water more often if we think it's necessary. It's not an exact science, by any means.

Generally, the taters need an inch of water per week during the spring and up to 2 inches in the summer. You can measure this, if you want. Put an empty tuna fish can under each section of hose and time how long it takes to fill the can which is about one inch deep. That’s how long you run your hose each time. Don't forget to adjust your watering if it happens to rain during the week.

If you don't have soaker hoses, you can water your taters with regular hoses. Just turn the hose on a low rate of flow just set it right on top of the dirt in the tire. Let the hose run for a half hour or so. Then, move on to the next stack of tires.

For the remainder of our garden, we use regular sprinklers and even plain old jugs of water.

If this is your first year gardening and you haven't already factored in the cost or set up a supplemental rainwater system, prepare yourself for a bit of sticker shock when the water bills come in.

It can take a lot of water to grow a garden. If you plan to grow a garden of any size (i.e., more than just a few containers or a raised bed or two), it might be worth it to look into rain barrels or even a graywater setup.