ooh, I know this one. So excited that I have learned so much reading these posts. Be kind if I am wrong though. I dont think I am.
The soil needs to be damp, but not wet and not dry, like a wrung out wash cloth. Depending on your conditions (soil structure, temps, etc) you should water to maintain when necessary. I use a spray bottle in the beginning to evenly mist the soil. You dont plant seed very deep so there is no need to water deep. Be carefull about damping off the seedlings, the tender sprouts can rot if kept too wet. I as well as alot of others prefer to start seeds indoors, Its really stupid easy and doesnt require much unless you are going for the gusto! This prevents skips if you use rows or in ground planting and also gives the plants an earlier and IMO better head start. Germination varies from plant to plant but usually 4 days to a week.

Hi christiinco, I am a newbie veggie gardener too. Have been watering by hand but day temps are almost 90 here and will only get hotter. Am wondering about putting in a drip system too. Whether to put in shrubllers or sprayers?

Drippers IMO. :)

The question seems to be about outdoor sowings and watering at the time of sowing. So damping off should not be a problem and the subsequent irrigation method is not really the issue.

There are various schools of thought. If you water before sowing, taking out the drill and covering it over can be messy. If you water after sowing you run the risk of either not penetrating the soil or overdoing it and washing your seeds away. The method I favour is to take out the drill in unwatered soil. Then I water the bottom of the drill thoroughly with a thin stream from the watering can. Then I sow the seeds and cover them with dry soil. That way the moisture is down in the drill where the seeds are and not on the surface evaporating.

Oops. I didn't read the second bit properly. Subsequent watering. I use a watering can with a rose but then in my climate you rarely need to water once things are up.

Hi christyinco

You have had answers that probably work in Florida and England, but not in dry, windy Colorado.

Water daily, twice a day for small-seeded plants like lettuce and carrots. For the very small seeds, I like to put down a row cover, flat on the soil, and water over that. It keeps the seeds from washing out of the soil, and then it holds the moisture a bit longer. Using a sprinkler is fine, hand watering is a pain, and getting enough moisture into dry clay or limestone soil is hard with a bucket and cup.

Many references say to put 1 inch of water on your garden a week. That works in the eastern third of the country, where there is water already in the soil. Don't bet on it in Colorado. Put at least 15 minutes of sprinkler water on your garden every day until the plants get up and established. Then you can switch to drip irrigation, if you want, and water every other day. Mulch, mulch, mulch! I use pine straw because I live at the edge of a forest. Nice stuff, it grabs and doesn't blow very much. But if I lived in an urban area without access to pine straw, I would use grass clippings, alfalfa hay, alfalfa pellets (like rabbit food), wheat straw, or purchased compost for mulch. You can find the hay, alfalfa pellets, and wheat straw at feed stores, and there should be one fairly near you even in big cities like Denver and Colorado Springs.

When the summer rains start in July and August, keep watering your garden every other day unless you have standing water after a storm. Yes, natural rain is nice, but we really don't get enough of it even in the rainy season.

My advice. Water more. It is really hard to overwater in the arid mountain west!

Catherine (chronic under-waterer)

Great! Thanks so much. I'm planting my seeds tomorrow!