HOZELOCK - Universal Irrigation Kit : Ideal for Watering Borders, Flowerbeds and Vegetable Gardens, Easydrip Universal Drippers/sprinklers, Supplied with 15m of Ø 13mm Hose [7023 0000]

Product Information

With this Orbit timer, you have many options for your watering schedule. Set the start time, duration of the watering session, and the frequency you want your sessions. The duration can be anywhere from 1 to 360 minutes and you can water on specific days of the week or in intervals of so many hours. It’s straightforward to program the timer and the dial is large and easy to read. When it comes to watering trees, we always recommend watering deeply and less often instead of frequently and shallowly. Drip irrigation is a gentle way of watering plants and trees. The trees are vulnerable after being moved to their new location and the last thing they want is a strong blast of water, plus the water runs away from the base of the tree. These Brentmoor bags deliver 75L of water over a period of five to seven hours. The water goes down directly to the tree’s roots, eliminating run-off and evaporation from the surface. This saves you money, in not using water that’s wasted, but also helps out the environment. Gardening experts state that the best watering system for newly planted trees is a soaker hose or a drip irrigation system. We cover both in this review. The Flexi Hose carries water from your tap to the Universal Drippers that can be positioned around your garden. The flexibility of the hose makes installation a breeze; plus the hose can be easily cut to create a layout tailored to your garden. The kit comes with 10 drippers, each capable of watering up to 100cm in diameter therefore providing extensive coverage.

As well as saving water by scheduling the sessions, there’s also a rain delay feature of one to seven days. This halts watering your trees after heavy rain for the time period you select. If the weather turns unexpectedly hot, use the manual “water now” function rather than reprogramming the entire schedule. Doing this doesn’t change the programming you’ve already set. Some online users report that a downside of this timer is that it’s a bit noisy. ProsWhatever irrigation system you’ve set up for your young or newly planted trees, the Orbit 96781 ‘Buddy HF’ Single-Port Digital Tap Timer allows you to automate the entire watering process. Connect the timer to your outside tap and connect your garden hose to the timer. Being a single-port timer, you can only attach one hose to it, however. The HF in the timer’s name stands for High Flow, in that it delivers 20% more water flow than most other timers. In this review, we take a look at different watering systems that do the job well, specifically a drip watering system, a soaker hose, and a low-tech bag irrigation system. As none of these are automated when you buy them, we have included a review of an Orbit water timer.

The HydroSure Soaker Hose delivers water directly to the base of multiple newly planted trees and is really good if you have a long length of planted trees or hedging, up a long driveway for example – you won’t waste water. You can also cut the porous rubber hose into lengths to surround each tree and deliver it to the roots by connecting the soaker hose to your garden hose. This isn’t an automatic system yet, so you need to buy a water timer to set up scheduled sessions – see the next review for our recommendation for this.The Orbit 96781 ‘Buddy HF’ Single-Port Digital Tap Timer has all the features to help you plan your watering schedule for any newly planted trees. It handles anything from a simple ‘one session a day’ schedule to a complicated timetable of several watering periods a day separated by an interval of time or a few days. The rain delay feature lets you temporarily and automatically cancel watering during a rainy period. Unfortunately, you can only connect one hose to this Orbit timer. If you have a complicated irrigation system, look at other Orbit timers (there’s quite a range) or figure out how to split the one hose into more within the system using multi-connectors. By programming the optimum watering schedule into a timer, you won’t be constantly anxious about remembering when you last watered these vulnerable plants.