A couple picture of newbie tomato plants

[dice]

Overhead watering is deprecated. Getting the foliage wet
increases the incidence of foliar fungal diseases, which are
the bane of tomato growers. Rain is risky enough, and we
cannot do much about that growing outdoors, but we can
decline to add to the risk ourselves with overhead watering.
(It will usually soak in through the grass clippings ok.)

What a lot of people do is put soaker hoses (or drilled pvc
pipe, drip lines with emitters, drip tape, etc) underneath their
mulch. The plants still get irrigated, but there is no splash up
onto the foliage.

Here is a thread with a lot of useful discussion of using pvc pipe
instead of soaker hoses. This one was gravity fed from a couple
of big barrels (and it worked, by the way):

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...ght=irrigation

[Mjdtexan]

Originally Posted by dice

Overhead watering is deprecated. Getting the foliage wet
increases the incidence of foliar fungal diseases, which are
the bane of tomato growers. Rain is risky enough, and we
cannot do much about that growing outdoors, but we can
decline to add to the risk ourselves with overhead watering.
(It will usually soak in through the grass clippings ok.)

What a lot of people do is put soaker hoses (or drilled pvc
pipe, drip lines with emitters, drip tape, etc) underneath their
mulch. The plants still get irrigated, but there is no splash up
onto the foliage.

Here is a thread with a lot of useful discussion of using pvc pipe
instead of soaker hoses. This one was gravity fed from a couple
of big barrels (and it worked, by the way):

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...ght=irrigation

Hmm, I didnt know there was an issue with overhead watering. I will correct that right away. Thank You for theinformation and the link.

Mjd

[dice]

No problem. The issue is really with wet foliage. That makes
a friendly home for fungi, including Early Blight, Late Blight,
Septoria Leaf Spot, Alternaria, Botrytis Wilt, etc. These are
chronic tomato diseases that can take down a whole plant,
sometimes in a very short time.

Rain is inevitably going to get them wet sometime, and as
a result we do see some of these diseases despite best
practices. Not overhead watering is simply part of minimizing
the risk. Leaving enough space between plants so that air
can flow freely through them and dry them out after a rain
is another anti-fungal best practice.

[aninocentangel]

Both of my soaker hoses developed leaks over the winter and buying new ones were beyond my means when I planted the garden. What I did was get one of those plastic sprinkler heads (mine is O shaped), I inverted it over a jar under the mulch, timed how long it takes to get the inch of water I want from it at a rate that I like, then marked that on the faucet and leave it upside down at the base of each plant for that time (about 15 minutes). It's more labor intensive than overhead watering or a soaker hose, but I know that I'm not watering weeds and my plants aren't melting into mush. Yet.

[dice]

I use homemade soaker hoses. I take old garden hoses that have
been replaced, cap the end, duct tape any major holes, stretch
them out along the rows, and poke a hole near the base of each
plant with a little tool that came in a cheap electrical test kit
(kind of like a miniature ice pick). Each year I recheck to make
sure I have a hole near each plant before covering with mulch
(plants are not necessarily in exactly the same spots each year).

When I turn it on to water, I check to make sure no new leaks
are blasting water up through the mulch and soaking some
plant.

These were all hoses I had laying around, waiting to be hauled
to a landfill, but one can occasionally find used ones for free
on Craigs List, etc.

[aninocentangel]

You should post about your soaker hoses in the new Workbench BIY forum. That's a good idea, I wish I'd thought of it before I tossed my old hose last year.