On Apr 14, 4:58 am, "Hud" wrote:
Anyone have an idea how often and how long I should water a 7'x8' vegetable
garden? (carrots, green beans, tomatoes and peppers - not planted yet)
Common sense tells me the best times to water are in the morning before the
sun heats things up and early in the evening when it gets cooler.

Yes avoid midday waterings unless your seedlings are about to shrivel.

Is once a day enough?

You would only water more than once a day if it is very drying
conditions and you have new seedlings planted. In most circumstances
every day would not be required.


I'm also not quite sure how long to water. I don't want to over-do it.

This will take some experience to learn. Study your garden carefully
each day, or morning and evening if you can, and work out if you
should water and if the last time you watered was deep enough but not
too deep.

I'll be watering with a hose that has a sprinkler head on it.
I'm thinking a few minutes of watering is plenty for such a small garden.
Am I on the right track?

No. A few deep waterings (say once or twice a week) is much better
than a light sprinkle each day. Put it on no faster than it will soak
in but keep it going until well soaked. Having a river running down
the path is stupid and wasteful.

Sorry if this seems like a silly question to those
of you with a lot of gardening experience. Prior to this year my closest
experience to gardening was buying vegetables at the grocery store. Lol
Thanks

Don't take a formula approach to this, learn to be flexible.

The absolutely most valuable thing you can learn as a gardener is to
be a good observer.

Practice your observation skills with watering. Observe the plants
themselves as well as the soil. Are the plants wilting at all? Is the
top of the soil damp? How about 4 inches down? Your aim is to water
sufficiently deeply only as often as is required. How much that is
and how often depends on many things:

- air temperature and humidity
- wind
- type of soil
- degree of mulching
- type and size of plants.

There is no accessible formula that will tell you how to compute all
that and determine your watering needs, you have to learn by
experience. There is a mechanistic way used by commercial growers
that requires accurately measuring the water content of the soil but
the instruments are very expensive and complete overkill for a small
garden.

David