I haven't heard of this before, but it's a great idea. I'm going to try it with my daylilies that are losing leaves from the heat.

Debra

Debra, we had a miraculous day with temps in the eighties yesterday. The daylilies all looked so much better with one day of respite from the heat. I will post later today and show a little of the difference. We are back to normal temps for July. Thank goodness. I hope the heat wave breaks for all of the forum friends.
kay

I've been asking friends who I know have families if I can have their jugs. It is just me and husband and I do not buy milk or juice. I want to try this in my daylilly, hosta and hydrangea patches.

I've wondered if there is a way to insert tubing into lower side of a jug and then run the tube with tiny pin holes into the garden bed as a makeshift soaker hose.
Anyone see tubing like that? If you can imagine an IV tubing that goes into a bag, that is what I'm thinking about.

Julia - That's an interesting idea! I've been doing more investigating about using plastic bottles for irrigation. I like the recycling aspect almost as well as the watering help. Here are a couple of links.

http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/home/resuse-plastic-milk-jugs.htm

http://www.providentliving.org.nz/gardening/bottle-drip-irrigation/

Debra

Debra: Thanks for the links. I have these cone shaped plastic water feeders which your suppose to screw onto the end of the recycled water bottle and then put the tip of the cone down into the ground but I'm not thrilled with it. It seemed to just soak one small area. Best for large planters but not large size garden beds.

Still hunting :-).

Julia

Gosh, my father used to do this 25 years ago with his vegetable garden! This is an old gardeners trick from way back.

My neighbor has to be around 80 years old. She was old when I was a teenager but always had nice flowers. It is nice that she can still keep them by having kids fill in bottles. Juliany, your idea would be perfect. At Lowes and Home Depot they have various size tubing. I actually have tubing in basement I might use. On another websit, someone said they use old soda litter bottles, put in ground and put sand in them to drain slowly. Maybe you could put tubing in bottle then pack with sand to keep it in place.

I have many packages of plastic tubing that came with the oxygen machine when my husband was ill. They won't take the tubing back whether its been opened or not. If anyone wants it, let me know. My yard is already burned up. I use the gallon jugs on my tomatoes, especially if I'm going to be gone for any length of time.I use lots of soaker hose in the flower beds, and turn it on at night. We are going on the 4th week of over 100's. There may be a small end in sight toward the end of next week

I've done it but with several hundred daylilies, it's an impossible task. However, I do it for tomato plants and have for many years...Ellie

I tried being inventive one year and used plumbing connections to put a short length of soaker hose in a five gallon bucket for watering individual areas. Didn't work--not enough water pressure to move the water out of the hose. I don't know how you could get holes in small tubing--either they are going to be too big or too small. It's just easier to run soaker hoses, especialy if you have a lot of day lilies.