The Must-Have Gardening Hose - Simple Soaker Landscape & Garden Sprinkling System

The Nelson Simple Soaker Landscape & Garden Sprinkling System combines the ease of laying down a soaker hose, with versatility of sprinklers. And, best of all, it really is "simple". It waters exactly where you want it, with no wasted water outside of your garden, which saves money and resources.

Each Simple Soaker kit you buy contains everything you need to cover 50 linear feet. You lay out the hose, put sprinklers in the desired spots, and adjust the sprinklers. It really did only take me the advertised 15 minutes, and I have no gardening skills. Now I can easily water my exact garden area with no wasted water simply by turning on the hose for a while, rather than moving around sprinklers, or worse, watering by hand.

The Hose
The hose can be shortened if desired, but it comes 50 feet long. An extra brass end-cap is included. If you want the hose to be less than 50ft long, you cut it to the desired length and attach the brass end. You can snake it through your landscaping; depending on how you are setting your sprinklers, you may want it to be on the edge, in the center, or in varying locations. It is a standard hose, with the standard connector.

The Sprinklers
Five sprinklers are included, although you don't need to use all five. The sprinklers can be individually adjusted to spray in a circle (if it is in the center of landscaping) or in a semi-circle (along the edge of your landscaping). The diameter of the spray can be adjusted from 1ft to 12ft. And if you need to raise your spray for a large plant, you can add a riser to any sprinkler.

Additional parts and accessories can be ordered from their website (see the resources link for this article).

The Planning
I spent more time calculating how to lay out my hose than I did on the installation. In my example, I wanted to water a narrow stretch of garden along a fence. I measured the width of this garden strip at 4-1/2ft. Therefore, if I put the sprinklers along the edge of my garden, they would need to spray 4-1/2ft to the fence. With a little trial and error, I adjusted the first sprinkler to spray just to the fence. I added a cap to make it spray in a semi-circle towards the fence, and the sides, still with a diameter of 4-1/2ft. Since each sprinkler would go 4-1/2 ft to each side, I could space them 9ft apart. I laid out the hose, and then used a tape measure to be sure that I spaced the sprinklers a little less than 9ft apart.

I make actually be able to grow something in my garden this year, thanks to the Simple Soaker Landscape & Garden Sprinkling System.