Going away? How to keep everything watered while you're gone

First, know what actually needs you

Not everything is in danger. Established plants in open ground, with their roots down deep, will shrug off a week of an ordinary British summer — especially after a proper soak and a mulch. What suffers is anything in a pot (a container can dry out in a single hot day), anything newly planted, and the thirsty summer crops in full production — tomatoes, courgettes, runner beans and anything in a growbag.

So the plan is simple: put your effort where the risk is. Beds get a soak and a mulch. Pots get gathered, shaded and stood in water. The thirsty crops get whatever automation you can manage — or a neighbour.

The free tricks (a weekend to a week)

• Huddle the pots in the shade.Move every container off the hot patio and into one shady spot, packed close so they shade each other's sides. Out of the sun, a pot loses half the water it would otherwise — and one huddle is easy for a helper to water in a minute.
• Stand the thirstiest in water.Deep saucers, a washing-up bowl, or an inch of water in a paddling pool or gravel tray — the compost wicks it up from below for days. (For a week or less, this alone will hold most pots.)
• Mulch anything bare. A couple of inches of compost or grass clippings over damp soil slows evaporation right down. Our watering guide covers why mulch does more than most watering ever will.
• Pick everything, even small.Courgettes become marrows in a week; beans that set seed tell the plant to stop. Picking hard before you go means the plants keep producing — and you come home to fresh pickings, not regrets.
• The upturned bottle. A wine bottle or two-litre bottle filled with water and pushed neck-down into the compost drips out slowly as the soil dries. A cheap terracotta or dripper spike makes it drip evenly instead of glugging out in an hour.

The kit that waters for you (a week or more)

For a proper holiday — or just a busy August — a battery tap timer feeding a soaker hose or drip lineis the honest answer. It's not complicated: the timer screws onto the tap, the hose runs along the beds, and every morning at six it quietly does the job better than most of us manage with a can.

• A tap timer— the brains of it. Set it for early morning so the water soaks in before the heat. See tap timers →
• Soaker hose along the beds— sweats water gently down its whole length, straight to the roots, no leaves wetted (the blight won't thank you, and that's the point). The soaker hose we use →
• A drip kit for pots and growbags— thin spaghetti lines with a dripper pegged into each container. Fiddlier to set up, unbeatable for a patio of pots. See drip kits →

No outside tap? A timer that works from a water buttneeds a gravity-fed drip kit (look for one made for it, as ordinary timers need mains pressure) — and if you're thinking about a butt anyway, our water butts guide is the place to start.

The neighbour deal (still the best system ever invented)

Every gadget on this page is second-best to a person with a watering can. The trade is as old as gardening itself: water it while we're away, and everything you pick is yours.In courgette season this is barely a favour — you're doing them a kindness on both ends of the deal.

Make it easy for them: pots in one huddle, the can left by the tap, and a note about the two or three things that really matter (the tomatoes, the growbags, anything just planted). Nobody waters a stranger's patch as carefully as their own — unless you've made it a two-minute job with free beans at the end of it.

Common questions