I don't leave any of my system hooked up in cold weather. I did water my onions in with a hose. This time of the year I have more trouble with my garden being too wet than too dry.

Larry

I hooked up my watering wand today and found that the metal pipe had frozen and broken. I had a lovely geyser. I thought I had drained it last time I used it in the greenhouse, disconnected it and hung it up. Shucks. I'll have to buy another one.

Nate, As you no doubt understand by this point, you should use drip irrigation during the warm season after the last frost of spring and before the first frost of autumn. Then remove the entire system in the fall, blow any lingering moisture (or at least attempt to) out of the system's components with an air compresser if you have one, box it up and store it in the garage or even inside the house if your garage gets really cold in winter.

For crops that need watering while freezing temperatures still are a possibility, I hand water with a hose or use a soaker hose. Drip systems that have water in any part of them can freeze, as you just learned. I never count on gravity to allow anything to drain naturally because it just isn't reliable. I'm sorry you had to learn this lesson the hard way. If it is any consolation, most of what I've learned about gardening was learned the hard way.

Dorothy, Uh oh. I hate it when stuff like that happens. I've had my watering wand at least a decade and every year when I use it for the first time in spring, I expect a geyser, though it hasn't happened yet. I'm actually surprised how long it has lasted because I do use it in late winter with stuff in the greenhouse.

If ever there was a late winter/early spring when we're likely to have these sorts of issues, this may be it. I hate it when we have high temperatures in the 70s/80s and then nights with lows below freezing and even into the teens. That describes last week perfectly at our place, and this week will be hot today and tomorrow before it cools off a bit, but we might manage to stay above freezing at night, so I guess that's a little improvement.

I'm dreading tomorrow's wind and, since I am hardening off the first round of tomato plants (the early, purchased ones) so I can put them in the ground sometime in the next couple of weeks, I have to be careful where I place them outdoors because the wind for the next couple of days could beat them to death.

Dawn