My garden dries out while I'm at work
The honest fix is to stop watering the surface and start watering below it. Two old methods beat every gadget here, and both remove the daily failure mode entirely rather than automating it.
What actually works
Buried clay pots that weep at the rate the soil pulls. 50–70% water savings, zero moving parts, and nothing to clog.
$8–25 per pot, or two cheap terracotta pots and glueA reservoir under the bed. Watering drops to a fill every 7–14 days — and a float valve makes it zero-touch.
$60–150 per bedMarketed for exactly this problem. The field data doesn't support it — mulch is cheaper and works better.
$15–40 that mulch would have done betterThe cheapest, most reliable evaporation control there is. Do this first, before buying anything.
Run the numbers
- Irrigation requirement & run time → — free calculator, works offline.
Also searched as
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