Hints and Tips for Preserving Your Garden Hose

You work hard to make your garden grow, and your trusty garden hose is one of your most important and essential tools. A lot of gardeners end up replacing their garden hoses every year, but you don’t have to do that. If you start out with a good garden hose and know how to take care of it, you can keep it working properly and extend its life for many seasons. These tips will help you buy the right garden hose for your needs and make it the last hose you’ll buy for years.

Buy the Right Length Garden Hose

A hose that’s either too long or too short won’t serve your needs properly. If your hose isn’t quite long enough to reach where you want, you’ll put extra stress and strain on it by pulling and tugging and stretching it to reach. A hose that’s a lot longer than you need is prone to tangles and kinks, which can wear and damage your garden hose. Buy a hose that’s the shortest length that will still reach everywhere you need.

Buy the Right Diameter Hose

You can reduce the amount of time you spend watering by making sure your garden hose has the capacity you need. A ¾ inch garden hose, for example, delivers twice as much water in the same time frame as a ½ inch garden hose. If you’re filling pools or need to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time, opt for the larger hose. For really powerful applications, choose a 1-inch water hose.

Turn On the Water Before Uncoiling Your Hose

Before you start uncoiling your garden hose, turn on the water. It will prevent the hose from kinking up as you pull it to your flower bed, sprinkler or garden. The water running through it will prevent the hose from folding over on itself, cutting off the water supply and putting strain on the wall of the hose.

Use a Garden Hose Reel

A garden hose reel keeps your hose off the ground where it can get damaged or rot. It also prevents your hose from kinking up and crimping, both of which can cause cracks and damage to your hose. A self-retracting garden hose reel will make your life easier and reduce the temptation to leave the hose on the ground just this once.

Don’t Leave Your Hose in the Sun

Letting your garden hose bake in the sun when it’s not in use is an invitation to wear and tear. The UV rays will dry out the material and cause cracks which reduce the life and usefulness of your garden hose.

If you start out with the right garden hose for your needs and treat it like the valuable tool it is, it will reward you by delivering water without kinking up, developing leaks and tripping you when you walk across your lawn.

Is Your Garden Hose Hazardous to Your Health?

The garden hose is a common, one could almost say ubiquitous, gardening tool. No serious gardener would be without a way to bring water to the furthest reaches of their garden plots. It’s a bit scary to think that your garden hose could be a health hazard, but it’s a fact. Here’s why.

Many cheap garden hoses are made of polyvinyl chloride – PVC. PVC uses lead as a stabilizer, and that lead can leach into water standing in the hose. In fact, when Consumer Reports tested a number of garden hoses, they found that the amount of lead in water that has stood in a hose can be as much as 100 times the allowable concentration of lead. That’s enough to cause lead poisoning in some people – particularly in small children who are much more sensitive to the effects of lead and whose bodies are much less efficient at eliminating it. And THAT is a particularly troubling because – think about it – who in your family is most likely to grab a cold drink from the inviting garden hose? Children, who are most prone to damage from lead, which can permanently damage their brains and nervous systems.

Should you worry about lead if you water your vegetables and fruit with a PVC garden hose? Research shows that plants don’t generally absorb lead through watering, but plants grown in soil with a high lead concentration can show elevated levels of lead. Soil, on the other hand, does retain lead for a long time – it’s part of the reason that children in urban neighborhoods shouldn’t play in lots where old houses have been demolished. How long does it take to build up toxic levels of lead in your gardening soil if you’re watering it with lead-laced water every day? No one really knows.

Luckily, there is a solution – replace your old PVC hose with a drinking safe garden hose. These hoses are made from rubber or have an interior coating that prevents any chemical leaching into the water that passes through it. They come in all sizes and diameters, so you should have no trouble finding a ½” garden hose or ¾” garden hose in 25-foot and 50-foot lengths, the most common garden hose sizes.

And if you go to the trouble of buying a drinking safe garden hose, be sure to follow these other tips for making sure your garden hose is safe for drinking water.

-          After use, drain your garden hose and store it on a garden hose reel to prevent standing water inside it.

-          Keep the hose out of direct sunlight, which can heat the hose to high temperatures and incubate any bacteria inside it.

-          Let the water run for a minute or two before drinking from the hose or filling drinking containers from it. That will flush out any standing water that might be harboring bacteria.