considering the use of flood irrigation on the end of the garden hose for watering pumpkins etc so leaves don’t get wet all the time. this sounds perfect to me without having to set up something more expensive…as the “water wonder” garden hose end available at www.peterbennettorganics.com.au is cheap, and i can move it to where i want. i’ll be only growing a handful of pumpkins and friends.
is anyone using such a gizmo or similar soft flow (yet fast) flood irrigator?

aquarium said:

considering the use of flood irrigation on the end of the garden hose for watering pumpkins etc so leaves don’t get wet all the time. this sounds perfect to me without having to set up something more expensive…as the “water wonder” garden hose end available at www.peterbennettorganics.com.au is cheap, and i can move it to where i want. i’ll be only growing a handful of pumpkins and friends.
is anyone using such a gizmo or similar soft flow (yet fast) flood irrigator?

Hand held or bucket only here, unless I use tank water and I try and ration that.

i have thought of making the bed have a hill in it.

I have a watering wand with various settings including a “flood” setting but I use that mostly for filling up the ducks’ water containers and bird bath. I would think that this sort of device would use a lot more water than a drip system.

My gravity feed was basically a flood setting, but it was too heavy for the garden. I started off putting holes in the hose along the way. The end was still a bit heavy on the “flood” and the water wasn’t getting as far as I needed it.

To try and spread the water over a bigger area I’ve now got dripper lines running off it (not the wee small stuff, the next size up) with holes in the hoses. The end still floods, and I have that near my water hungry things – silverbeet, lettuce. If my silverbeet is anything to go by – it loves it.

You just want to be aware of the damage the water can do by removing soil. Maybe if you can run it over a couple of bricks or pavers to disperse it before it gets too close to the roots. Or attach a piece of … flip … what is that hose called … the one with all the slits in it that you normally bury … attach a piece of that to the end and wind that through your plot.

veg gardener said:

i have thought of making the bed have a hill in it.

yep me too – i make dams around a lot of my veges and flood irrigate with a bucket
- come on flooding rains.

thanks for all the thoughts. since it’s pretty cheap, i might have a go with it, and will give my review of it.
according to the writeup, it’s supposed to deliver a lot of water with a soft flow…so shouldn’t erode soil. we’ll see. i don’t want to go to the trouble of setting up drip irrigation for a handful of pumpkins and melons, which will get grown again next year in a distant bed.
thanks again for the ideas etc.