I tried out some new gardening tools for watering this year. We’ve had a relatively wet summer in the Ozarks, but I still regularly use watering tools when I’m working in the garden.
This summer I tried out a new “Super Duty Flexogen” hose from Gilmour (www.gilmour.com). Rated as kink resistant and lightweight, I keep this hose hooked up on my porch for watering all my potted plants — a task that happens every day. This hose does not kink easily, and its weight makes curling it up on the porch every day very easy.
Before you hook up your garden hose, put a multihead shut off valve on the main faucet. This will make it really easy to have a couple of hoses hooked up. I like to keep a hose ready for my potted plants and a hose ready for other needs like watering with a sprinkler. The splitter will have simple levers that go back and forth to open and close water flow to each particular hose.
Have you ever tried to attach a hose to a faucet with multiple tries and little success? Very frustrating! Take the time to hook up quick connectors to the shut off valves and to each outdoor faucet. Quick couplers make hooking and unhooking hoses easy with a simple push of the connector. Gilmour has the shut off valves and quick connectors available, and Gilmour products are sold at most places with garden supplies.
Check out Plant Natural’s “Hose Bib Extender” (www.planetnatural.com) for a handy way to have another spigot somewhere else in your yard. The faucet extender is a 31-inch steel stake that pushes into the ground with a step bar. Dedicate a hose to connect to the faucet extender, but then you can easily connect a hose to the faucet on the extender when needed.
I love a good spray wand, and I always have one available in my greenhouse and on my porch for watering my plants. Gardener’s Edge (www.gardenersedge.com) has an 18-inch “Dragonfly Watering Wand” with seven different watering patterns and a spray head that swivels 180 degrees. The handle of the wand has “wings” that open so the wand can be laid in the bed to water with a sprinkler pattern that covers up to 450 square feet.
The right tool in the right place is always helpful, especially when it comes to watering.
Questions or comments related to gardening? Contact Joleen at missourigardener@hotmail.com.