We've got 4 1.8m square raised vegetable beds sitting on gravel. In previous years we've started the beds off in the spring, had good growth, then buggered off on holiday for a couple of weeks in May and lost half the pllants due to lack of rain.
This year will be different, I've set up a soaker hose and timer to water the beds (and some pots). Chatting with Claude AI suggested that i should run the timer for 30 minutes, once a day in the early morning. System sense to working, but there is some apparent run off in the gravel away from the beds (not sure if I'm explaining that well enough, there's some small pools a couple of metres away, like happens when it rains). Makes me think i should reduce the time so we not to waste water. The timer i have let's you ruin it for 3, 5, 15, or 30 minutes every 24 hours(or different lengths of time every 8, 12 or 48 hours). Any experienced advice would be great, I'm not an expert gardener!
Currently have Cabbages (pointy and savoy), summer squash, cucumbers and parsnips in, plus some pots of lettuce
cheers!
edited for autocorrect typos