My physical disability limits what I can do- after a relatively small amount
of exertion I start to ache and become exhausted so I need some way of doing
this that gets round that. This is my first garden and I'm making it
low-maintenance and so on, but I haven't solved the hose problem yet.
I don't want to use sprinklers or anything sophisticated- ideally I'd just
like a hose I can manage, point where I want, then put away afterwards
without doing any hard work.

So far I've tried two. The first one was the curly kind that coils itself up
to a 3ft long coil when allowed to and tries to fight the user by trying to
coil up while in use, but is apparently 15m long. One of these could reach
all the relevant garden areas, just, but was much stretched in doing so and
could not be let go of for an instant in case it did something terrible, like
wreaking havoc by squirting water into the back of my TV and elsewhere as it
spings back through the living room window. It it required someone to hold it
while I went in and turned the tap on/off. I won't have someone else around
whenever I want to water the garden, so this hose on its own- ie just one of
them- is unusable.

I tried another hose- I got 30m of normal 1/2" hose from Screwfix for £12.
This didn't have the springiness problem but it was a huge hassle to drag it
all back indoors and coil it up again into a large messy pile of hose, which
once again required another person to help as after a short period of
hose-gathering-up I was exhausted.

I know there are other options. There are hoses that come on reels, some of
which seem to have a mechanism for winding back onto the reel. This would be
an improvement over the non-reel straight hose, but it still sounds like a
fair bit of work to wind it all up. There is a 20m reel-hose combo special
offer on the Crocus site;

http://www.crocus.co.uk/toolsandstuf...ct_Card&ClassI
D=2000002910&CategoryID=127

that seems very affordable, but I wonder how much work it is to wind the hose
up.

There's another Hozelock hose-reel combo (not on the Crocus site) that is
only 10m long but automatically winds itself up- but the pics I saw seemed to
show it wall-mounted and I don't know if it can be used free-standing or if
it is portable, which I'd need.

I've had one other idea. Get another of the curly hoses and join the two end
to end. If I joined two of these there wouldn't be much fighting to do as the
whole thing would not be tightly stretched out like it was when I only had
one, and the self-coiling would be very useful in tidying it all up. I have
even thought of ways I could store this- it would thread onto a long-handled
tool like a rake and could be stored away neatly in this form- even two of
them- one on a rake and one on, er, another rake or something. I've inherited
some really bad quality garden tools and they would make an ideal storing
device for two of these curly hoses.

Any suggestions? Any ideas would be appreciated.

--
VX (remove alcohol for email)

On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 17:45:18 +0100, VX wrote
(in message m):



Any suggestions? Any ideas would be appreciated.



Since posting that I've seen some expensive Hozelock self-winding options
that cost £80 or so. These look like they would largely solve my problem but
I'd really like to spend a lot less if I can...

--
VX (remove alcohol for email)

In article m, VX
writes
On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 17:45:18 +0100, VX wrote
(in message m):



Any suggestions? Any ideas would be appreciated.



Since posting that I've seen some expensive Hozelock self-winding options
that cost £80 or so. These look like they would largely solve my problem but
I'd really like to spend a lot less if I can...

Have you also considered trying to reduce your need for watering by
changing your choice of plants? Yes, I know they'll be some you really
want to grow and will have to water, but for areas you're not fussed
about, changing to drought tolerant plants might be an option.
--
Kay
"Do not insult the crocodile until you have crossed the river"

VX wrote:
On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 17:45:18 +0100, VX wrote
(in message m):



Any suggestions? Any ideas would be appreciated.



Since posting that I've seen some expensive Hozelock self-winding
options that cost £80 or so. These look like they would largely
solve
my problem but I'd really like to spend a lot less if I can...

I think a problem with self-winding hoses (though I've never used
one, so of course I'm just guessing) might be that you could find
they need a fair old effort to pull out: they must work on a spring
much stronger than those vacuum-cleaner flexes.

I wonder if it might be all right to leave the hose extended all the
time, and just move it about a bit when necessary. A black one, if
you can get it, wouldn't be unsightly in most gardens once it had
lost any shine. (I always think black is the best camouflage colour
among vegetation, and can't begin to understand why nearly
everything's coloured green, which shows up like a sore thumb.)

The other thing that occurs to me is to ask if you really need to
water things at all. Unless a plant is newly-planted, or has some
special requirement, I don't really believe in it. If it's not one of
the special cases, and if you aren't in a very rainless area on very
dry soil, I think it's best to let a plant dig down to find its own
water rather than send out its roots too near the surface.

Also, if you don't always feel as strong as you'd like to, then you
may not be able to manage the hose for as long as you really need to
to get the topsoil so soaked that it equalises its moisture content
with the subsoil -- and that should be the target, in a perfect
world.

Maybe your best bet is to forget about watering, and use mulches to
keep the moisture (and weeds) down. Plenty of ludicrously muscular
gardeners do it that way.

--
Mike.

In article , Mike Lyle
wrote:

I think a problem with self-winding hoses (though I've never used
one, so of course I'm just guessing) might be that you could find
they need a fair old effort to pull out: they must work on a spring
much stronger than those vacuum-cleaner flexes.

That's not the case as the winding mechanism is geared. In fact they
feed out quite easily and the Hozelock Auto Reel is just heavenly to
use. Not only does it make it easy to keep the hose tidy but you don't
need to lay a hand on a muddy, wet hose while it rewinds automatically.

I see they've just brought out a mobile hose sytem with big wheels and
a towing handle so it's no effort to move around on different terrain
and even up and down steps - and although it isn't automatic rewind,
it's allegedly much easier to rewind than a conventional reel. At 40
metres it's overkill for the OP - and over budget, too.

I wonder if it might be all right to leave the hose extended all the
time, and just move it about a bit when necessary. A black one, if
you can get it, wouldn't be unsightly in most gardens once it had
lost any shine. (I always think black is the best camouflage colour
among vegetation, and can't begin to understand why nearly
everything's coloured green, which shows up like a sore thumb.)

I would never advise anyone - especially anyone frail - to leave a hose
out after use. Too easy to trip over - it has to come into the open at
some point to attach to the tap. Better to at least disconnect the tap
end and hide it out of harm's way.

Stan The Man wrote:
In article , Mike Lyle
wrote:
[...]
I wonder if it might be all right to leave the hose extended all
the
time, and just move it about a bit when necessary. A black one, if
you can get it, wouldn't be unsightly in most gardens once it had
lost any shine. (I always think black is the best camouflage
colour
among vegetation, and can't begin to understand why nearly
everything's coloured green, which shows up like a sore thumb.)

I would never advise anyone - especially anyone frail - to leave a
hose out after use. Too easy to trip over - it has to come into the
open at some point to attach to the tap. Better to at least
disconnect the tap end and hide it out of harm's way.

Sound, Stan: I hadn't thought of that.

--
Mike.

In article m, VX
wrote:

Since posting that I've seen some expensive Hozelock self-winding options
that cost £80 or so. These look like they would largely solve my problem but
I'd really like to spend a lot less if I can...

The Hozelock Mini Auto Reel would be ideal for you. It's a smaller
version of the more familiar 20m self-winding Auto Reel and costs
around £45 from Argos and numerous others. But all self-winding hose
reels need to be fixed to a wall for the extra stability the wall
gives.

On 23/4/05 17:45, in article
, "VX"
wrote:

My physical disability limits what I can do- after a relatively small amount
of exertion I start to ache and become exhausted so I need some way of doing
this that gets round that. This is my first garden and I'm making it
low-maintenance and so on, but I haven't solved the hose problem yet.
I don't want to use sprinklers or anything sophisticated- ideally I'd just
like a hose I can manage, point where I want, then put away afterwards
without doing any hard work.

snip
A couple of years ago we were on holiday in Menorca. The owner of the villa
we rented had installed holey hosepipe all round the garden and came over
two or three mornings a week to turn on a tap which ran for an hour or so.
The pipe was almost invisible threaded behind or among shrubs. You can buy
such hose from some garden suppliers (try a Google search). And if you're
going for low-maintenance don't go for things in containers because they
need more watering, more often, in summer.
--

Sacha
(remove the weeds for email)

In message m, VX
writes
My physical disability limits what I can do- after a relatively small amount
of exertion I start to ache and become exhausted so I need some way of doing
this that gets round that. This is my first garden and I'm making it
low-maintenance and so on, but I haven't solved the hose problem yet.
I don't want to use sprinklers or anything sophisticated- ideally I'd just
like a hose I can manage, point where I want, then put away afterwards
without doing any hard work.

Is some sort of irrigation system a possibility here?. I would imagine
it would make life easier.

For beds etc. the 'leaky pipe' porous hose, or that perforated plastic
layflat pipe ran around the beds would be pretty easy to install, and
isn't that expensive. for low maintenance then I'd avoids pots as much
as possible, but if you have them, make them big.
--
Chris French and Helen Johnson, Leeds
urg Suppliers and References FAQ:
http://www.familyfrench.co.uk/garden/urgfaq/index.html

Many thanks for the responses- that's quite a lot to think about. I'll follow
up on the non-watering philosophy as that seems very intelligent. And I think
I've found a hose for those times when only watering will do- I've been
reading some of the instructions here and there for looking after new
roses/hedging/etc and there are several injunctions to never let the things
dry out for the first year. So I'm going to play safe in some areas and have
a hose anyway, but probably not rely on it anywhere near as much as I thought
I would. Bakker do a cheap one on a reel that looks as good as anything else
does for thirty quid, and at least that way it can be coiled up and put out
of the way, without which a hose is a bit of a nightmare in a small garden
attached to a very small flat!

--
VX (remove alcohol for email)

I'm the OP, and having been indisposed for a few days i have returned to read
more responses- and I have a couple of questions.

1] When considering parts of the UK as being (or not) areas needing
additional watering by humans to supplement the water in the soil, how would
you rate London? Its a heavy-ish clay soil here with the clay less than a
foot below the surface.

[Hopefully its becoming less heavy as i add organic matter and the worms mix
it all up for me. Prior to my inheriting this garden it appears to have been
largely neglected, especially as fas as digging is concerned. If I'd been
told it hadn't been dug since 1937 I would not have been too surprised.
Friends who were digging it for me had a *really* hard time.]

2] When plants (for example shrub roses like Rugosas) send their roots down
looking for moisture, do those roots go into the clay?

--
VX (remove alcohol for email)