5 Gal Bucket Watering

Mark1427

Member
I'm using 5 gal buckets with an 1/8 “ hole drilled near the bottom edge to water my seedlings.
I’m in zone 7a, how many times a week should I be filling them up?

The trees are ACs, Chinese Chestnut and American Plum.
 
I do the same as you for newly planted trees. However I only water if I am not getting regular rains. Otherwise like Matt stated at LEAST once a week. When it gets good and dry you may need to step up to twice or maybe even 3 times depending on how well the soil will hold the moisture. I live on my property so watering when needed is still a pain, but doable.
 
Thanks for the answers. I was filling buckets twice a week before it started getting hot. I surely didn't want to over do it.

I will keep that plan in place, being the heat has picked up and it hasn't rained in a week here.
 
We’ve been lucky here in NE Texas having received timely rains about once ever 7-10 days. Right now we’re at day 12 with no measurable rain. However, we have a 90% chance tomorrow so maybe we’ll get some. I generally don’t worry unless we get on the back end of that 7-10 day time frame and there’s no forecasted chances of rain for the next few days. If it don’t rain tomorrow I’ll be hooking up he water wagon for the first time this summer.


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I put buckets on all my grafted fruit and nut planting’s. My goal is to give them one full bucket at planting, two at the most.

After that, they’re on their own. The buckets remain in place to take advantage of thunderstorms or other heavy rain events.


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Here's a very useful, nearly useless piece of information. Maybe helpful for the OCD among us (me).

The average surface area of the top and bottom of a 5 gal bucket is about one square foot - if you forget about OCD precision and go with some rounding.

There are 43,560 square feet in an acre.
An acre-inch of water is about 27,154 gallons. Or, to put it another way, when it rains an inch, that's about how many gallons fall an each acre of your field. To wiggle an acre down to square feet, one square foot gets something like 0.6 gallons of water. So, your 5-gallon bucket adds nearly 8-inches equivalent rainfall - assuming all the world is a straight line.
The hydrodynamics (is there such a thing?) are a little different when you water by the bucket. The only point is, one bucket of water per tree seem more than adequate!
Wasn't that fun?
 
Last edited:
Here's a very useful, nearly useless piece of information. Maybe helpful for the OCD among us (me).

The average surface area of the top and bottom of a 5 gal bucket is about one square foot - if you forget about OCD precision and go with some rounding.

There are 43,560 square feet in an acre.
An acre-inch of water is about 27,154 gallons. Or, to put it another way, when it rains an inch, that's about how many gallons fall an each acre of your field. To wiggle an acre down to square feet, one square foot gets something like 0.6 gallons of water. So, your 5-gallon bucket adds nearly 8-inches equivalent rainfall - assuming all the world is a straight line.
The hydrodynamics (is there such a thing?) are a little different when you water by the bucket. The only point is, one bucket of water per tree seem more than adequate!
Wasn't that fun?
I enjoyed that Clifford C. Claven! And keep in mind a mature oak tree takes up daily 50-100 gallons of water.
 
I enjoyed that Clifford C. Claven! And keep in mind a mature oak tree takes up daily 50-100 gallons of water.
Ok, well yes, of course. But, lets assume the mature oak tree's proportional area of an acre is determined by the diameter of the tree crown. That would assume the root area in need of water occupies the same space. So.......
 
Damn y’all lost me LOL

All I know is I need to water once every ten days or so or my trees will suffer the consequences.


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