I’ve got a garden of approximately 10×8 metres. It took me well over an hour to water it tonight with a watering can. Should I just buy a hose or is it worth the extra cost and fiddling putting in an irrigation system?

By irrigation systemm I mean one of those kits with the little black hoses and drippers that go to each plant.

You haven’t given too much away in your thread about plant types, sizes, slant or slope of the garden, amount of lawn etc so in true singletrackworld style I will base my answer on assumptions and speculation!!

Plants in general are much hardier than most people think. Plants are on the whole prolific. Too much or too little of water, light, Oxygen, CO2, Nitrogen and others will impair growth, breed disease or kill them.

I think that your garden will love you more if you were to improve the soil rather than provide lots of watering. A fine earthy loam with plenty of humus / organic mater will hold lots of water anyway. Unless you have almost only annuals it would only need watering occasionally throughout the year and certainly not so much as to justify an irrigation system.

Hard to believe but I have found that watering too often promotes root growth towards the surface as the plants search towards where the water is coming from. Roots should grow down and out to search for water as that is where it is held in the ground naturally.

On the other hand if you are just after the okay to spend a bit of your money…….. go for it!!

I have a 90cm wide border of plants all the way round. Most of the plants seem to ones that either come back each year or are bush things with flowers. Sounds like a hose is the best option. Plus I can use it to control cats and my daughter.

@TheBrick – I don’t get it? He looks like the Donny Darko bunny gone yuppy??!

I’ve fitted the 4mm micro-irrigation system in our garden, feeding all the shrubs. Really impressed by it, the rate of growth is really impressive when every plant gets a guaranteed 4l per day.

I started with a Hozelock kit, but then found the same stuff much cheaper on Ebay, so expanded it with that.

Each plant has a drip feeder

[url=https://flic.kr/p/nh7kVy]Drip feed for each plant[/url] by brf, on Flickr

And the whole lot (50+ of them) runs off a timer:

[url=https://flic.kr/p/nh7nN3]Timer[/url] by brf, on Flickr

I live in Devon. Irragation is regular and free…