On 6/22/2016 12:56 PM, Davej wrote:
On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 9:25:03 PM UTC-5, Helen Pearson wrote:
I need to be able to water my strawberries from outside the cage. The
cage is quite large, containing 12, 2.5mx1.5m beds.

I thought I could rig up a system for each bed using a loop of soaker
hose attached to a 5 litre container which can be filled from the
outside path. Will there be enough pressure to 'soak'?

So you want to evenly apply 5 liters of water to each 2.5m x 1.5m bed.

I would think that a drip system would be your only hope. A soaker
hose is designed for normal household water pressure, so you would not
have enough pressure from a bucket to operate a ordinary soaker hose.

The problem with a drip system is that it is inefficient because a
large portion of the water will simply evaporate before reaching the
plant roots. A system that might work would be a hollow watering stake
buried next to each plant with each stake fed from a hose from the
bucket. This would allow gravity-fed water to more directly reach the
plant roots. This could be expanded to a perforated water pipe pattern
buried at slightly below root depth with filler pipes to the surface.

My Dad used to drill holes in one inch galvanized piping and put one
alongside a watermelon plant. He filled the pipe twice a day and grew
humongous melons. He tried it with a banana squash and the thing looked
like a log and was still meaty with a few seeds. He was retired then so
he had plenty of time to play.