Do I need to suck it up and buy a soaker hose?

June 3, 2023 4:27 AM

I paid a bunch of money to have four giant arborvitae planted on April 5, and apparently it doesn't rain in Michigan anymore. More inside.

I am moving and heavily downsizing, so that's why I haven't just purchased a soaker hose. I gave away my regular hose a while ago (see downsizing). I've been watering each one every other day using a two-gallon watering judge (so two gallons per tree), but I'm not sure that's sufficient. The tops of them are slightly curled over, but other than that, they look fine. They are about four feet tall. (Sorry I can't do pictures.)

It has rained once since they were planted. It might rain today. Temps are getting pretty close to 90 and the area gets a lot of sun. I would expect us to start getting a lot of rain, but I would have expected that already. This is southeast Michigan.

Other solutions are welcome if they don't involve lifting heavy things. If I am being stupid (very possible), please be kind about it. If soaker hose is the answer, please advise on details of how to use it.

posted by FencingGal to Home & Garden (8 answers total)

Placing mulch or something that is flat and will stay put around the base of the trees will keep the ground wetter for longer where you've been watering. I would suggest that even if you did buy a soaker hose. It's part of the principle of those bags of water you'll see municipalities put around trees, or something like the waterboxx. I'm not even sure if they sell that thing anymore, but there's a bunch of different versions of things like that out there. I'm actually not suggesting you buy anything at all because I think you're trying to avoid that. But the basic idea of a lot of them is that you're preventing evaporation by putting something on top of the surface. Stones (violating your quest not to use heavy things) can work, but so can mulch. Don't put the mulch right up on the base of the tree.

If you want to make a fake one, and you happen to have four buckets you were getting rid of anyway, you could drill a hole in the bottom of each one and put in some cord through the hole so the water slowly leaks out, then set them beside the trees, fill them with water, then cover them so you're not making mosquito pits. That's basically what the water box is anyway.
posted by AbelMelveny at 5:08 AM on June 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I believe this is what tree gators are used for.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 6:15 AM on June 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

At a previous residence, I put in a long line of arborvitae as a privacy barrier. I snaked a long soaker hose around the bases of the plants. It did a great job over the years, even under multiple years of mulch being dumped over the hoses.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:21 AM on June 3, 2023

Best answer: Two gallons every other day is probably not sufficient - note that the tree bags that Winnie the Proust linked above hold 15-50 gallons and you refill them every 5-7 days. That's a lot of trips with a 2-gallon watering can. I did something like AbelMelveny's bucket trick last year with some new shrubs in inconvenient places in my yard - filled five-gallon buckets with little holes in them ~2x/week. It was a lot of work carrying the water back and forth, and by the end of the summer they were in rough shape anyway (bad drought while I was away from home did not help). This year I'm using a soaker hose (connected via some old hoses I got free off my local Buy Nothing group).

As for how to use it - I bought a customizable kit with little push connectors somewhere (Home Depot? Amazon?) and it came with instructions; I run the regular hose up close then loop the soaker hose around the trunk a couple times. I think ideally you want the hose to kind of drip/ooze for an hour or two rather than going full blast for 10-15 minutes, although as long as the water isn't running away you're probably fine.

Water in the morning before it gets hot.
posted by mskyle at 6:47 AM on June 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Check with your neighbors to see if they have an extra hose they aren't using. If not, you might have a freecycle page you can post on near your city. Before I moved, I somehow acquired two hoses and would have gladly given or loaned one to a neighbor.
posted by rakaidan at 7:25 AM on June 3, 2023

Best answer: yes, get a soaker hose. you need more water for AVs than is reasonable to apply manually. they are VERY thirsty and actually not so great for the boundary purpose because one good dry spell and they die.
posted by Geckwoistmeinauto at 9:31 AM on June 3, 2023

Response by poster: Ordered soaker hose. Realized it was silly to try to save this much money after what having the trees put in cost.

Thanks to everyone for your help!
posted by FencingGal at 9:48 AM on June 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

Arborist wood chip mulch is highly recommended per the Garden Professors. Also, re: gator bags.
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:08 AM on June 4, 2023 [2 favorites]