giveaway: i hate to water, but met a hose to love

IHATE TO WATER, but unless the heavens provide an inch a week, it requires human intervention on these two hilly acres with thousands of plants, a well that is understandably precious and limited, and no irrigation system beyond a few basic spigots to connect to. Lately, we’ve been blessed locally with extra rain; any day now, it could be hose-dragging time—which isn’t as bad as it used to be since I finally found a hose I can handle (and you can, too, if you win one of two I’ve bought to share).

First, a disclaimer, since my old-style journalistic policy is not to accept samples of garden products or plants, even for my giveaways, and because I almost never write about a product:

I got my first length of this particular hose when it was a prototype, in an inadvertent swap with the man developing it. Jeff Thomas of Water Right Inc. emailed me when I left my job and started A Way to Garden; he’d heard I was consulting, and wondered if I might be free to help with something. We met, and though we never did work together, that morning I swapped some of my ideas for a bagel, tea—and a piece of the most unusual-looking garden hose I’d ever seen.

I know more than the average gardener about garden hose, because at Martha Stewart, I worked intensively with manufacturers on her original K-Mart line. Plus, I own many, many hundreds of feet of hose, all of which I thought was top quality to match my tough site—but I nevertheless have been dissatisfied with every foot.

Even the very best—sporting claims like “kink-free” and multiple “ply” (the layers of reinforcing materials that make up the tube, up to eight of them), or better-than-average fittings (still mostly junk), and maybe even dyed a color that didn’t make my teeth ache–even with all those improvements, hose is my least-favorite tool.  In fact, I blame traditional garden hose design for my bad relationship with the chore of watering.

It’s just too heavy (especially “kink-free,” since attempts at reducing kinking typically add weight). Though it’s often hot when I need to water, I am not built like a fireman, and lugging hundred-foot lengths to set sprinklers in one spot after another is no fun.

Worse than kinking, it gets damaged wherever a kink tries to happen. Ever notice how once you crease a hose too far, that spot will be where creases occur again and again? No coincidence. When you bend multi-ply hose beyond a certain point, you actually damage all those layers, and leave a memory in the material, a weak point.

And by then it has already also probably started to leak near the connectors because the fittings were cheaply made, and it’s time for repair…or what most people do instead: haul it off to the dumpster. Do we really need more “disposable” PVC products in our lives?

SO IN 2008, THERE I WAS with this attractive olive-colored, narrow, almost weightless length of prototype hose from Jeff Thomas, thinking: What a nice man, but this must be just another garden-product gimmick, right? This looks too sleek to actually work.

Obviously the punchline is that it wasn’t a gimmick (or I wouldn’t be giving away two hoses). When Water Right started selling its Slim & Light line, I ordered more, and am gradually retiring my old clunkers as they give out.

All of Water Right’s hoses (they make coil hoses as well, for smaller jobs) have some unseen features. They are drinking-water safe (most hoses contain and leach lead and other chemicals), made of polyurethane, not PVC, a stronger material requiring fewer “ply.” They have machined fittings made of solid brass plated in chrome. They’re made in the United States, and even come in nice colors (including a new blue shade called “sunken pool” that Martha Stewart selected.

Even though the hoses are really slender and lightweight, at just 1 ounce per foot—meaning a 50-footer weighs just 3 pounds—they deliver 4 to 5 gallons per minute, plenty to run my sprinkler (and a slightly wider diameter model is being introduced in July). Speaking of which, if I can just find a sprinkler that I really love just as much…watering might be not so bad after all.

By the way, that’s my favorite piece of watering gear in the photo up top: an old metal kitchen stool from the tag sales. I use it to prop up a sprinkler to do small beds here and there around the yard, when placing the sprinkler on the ground just sprays the water right into the foliage and flowers.

How to Win 1 of 2 50-Foot Hoses

BY COMMENTING BELOW, you enter to win one of two Water Right 50-foot Slim & Light hoses that I will purchase for you (you can choose your favorite color). All you have to do:
Tell me your take on watering: love it, hate it, have any secrets to it? I know that Americans are suffering every extreme this year, from record drought to record flooding, but if there ever is a “normal” year in your garden, how do you grapple with your watering chores? (Or you can tell us how bad things are in your garden and area because of water troubles; complaints are fine, too.)

You know me: I won’t count you out if you just want to say “I want to win” or something to that effect. If you have any watering tips or rants—all the better.

I’ll choose the two winners after entries close at midnight, Sunday July 3. Good luck to all.