In a previous post from 2019, I measured the flow rate of our hose and nozzle and related it to the watering needs of the garden, as a guideline for watering. The guideline is based on a reasonable estimate of the need for water of most mature crop plants, which is about 1 inch per week. Since that post, we’ve changed both hoses and garden bed size, so this is an update. This is of course only a guideline, and watering requirements obviously need to take in account the weather and the particular needs of different crops.
Our main garden beds are nominally 4 x 23 feet, or 92 square feet. 1 inch of rain on that surface would be about 7.7 cubic feet which is about 57 gallons.
I measured the flow rate of the two hoses by timing how long it takes to fill a 4 gallon bucket. The hose and watering wand connected directly to the hydrant took about 50 seconds to fill the bucket, or about 4.8 gallons per minute. So to get 1 inch of water on the whole bed takes almost 12 minutes. The hose and wand on the other end of the garden took about 110 seconds, or about 2.2 gallons/minute, so 1 inch on the whole bed would take about 26 minutes.
Splitting those times into 7 days, that would be about just under 2 minutes or 4 minutes on each bed per day to get 1 inch of water per week, if there’s no rain.
