Apply Water Evenly With a Watering Wand

Backgrounder

Are all the plants in your nursery – plants such as coffee, tea, tobacco, spices, or tree seedlings – growing at the same rate? Getting the same amount of water to each seedling can help them grow more evenly. And having seedlings of equal size and vigour will get your crop off to a good start.

But it can be difficult to water the distant sides and corners of your nursery beds with a hosepipe or ordinary watering can. Also, the plants closest to you can get watered too much which can stunt growth and root development.

An improved watering can, also called a watering wand, might help. And it is something you can build yourself.

What you need:

Here are the things you need to make a watering wand.

The first thing you need is a piece of rigid or partly rigid plastic pipe with a diameter of 20 millimetres. It should be about one metre long or the width of your nursery bed. Electrical conduit is ideal, but you could also use black PVC water piping or plastic gas piping. The important thing is that the pipe does not bend when held in a horizontal position with water in it.

You will also need: A watering can, a bicycle spoke, a small heat source such as a candle or small fire, a sharp knife, some glue – and a little creativity.

How to make a watering wand

What you are going to do is make holes along one side of the plastic pipe and then attach the pipe to the spout of a watering can. The result will be a watering wand that delivers a curtain of water across the full width of your nursery bed.

First, mark the sites of your holes about 25 millimetres apart along the side of your pipe in a straight line.

Next, make holes in the pipe. To do this, heat the end of the bicycle spoke over a flame and then push the heated spoke through the wall of your pipe. The spoke doesn’t need to be very hot, just hot enough so that it passes through the plastic with slight pressure. If the plastic smokes when the bicycle spoke is pushed into it, the spoke is too hot. The heat from the flame of a candle will probably be enough, although you will have to wait a few seconds for the spoke to heat up.

Trial and error will tell you how long to keep the spoke in the flame. It might be worth experimenting with a spare piece of plastic of the same material before working on your watering wand.

You will have to apply a small amount of pressure in order to push the spoke through the wall of the pipe. When you withdraw the spoke, a ring of plastic will be left around the hole.
Once you have made all the holes, cut away the ring of melted plastic from around each hole with a sharp knife, leaving a neat, clean, hole.

Next you will need to close one end of the pipe. You can use a plastic bottle top that fits either over or into the tube. Make it secure with a little glue. Or you can heat the end of the pipe, pinch it together and then melt the ends together.

To attach the other end of the pipe to the watering can you will probably have to put a short piece of scrap hosepipe into the end of the watering can spout so that the wand fits tightly. A little glue makes sure that the pipe stays in the spout of the watering can.

If you have a piped water supply to your nursery, the same plastic watering wand can be attached to the end of your hosepipe.

You now have a watering device that can water more of your seedlings at one time. You will see that it helps you to water evenly. All your nursery plants will get the amount of water they need to grow well!

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Note:
If electrical conduit or PVC water piping is not available, you can try using a piece of bamboo to make this watering wand.