Wrap Up a Delightful Labor-Saving Gadget

Gardening mixes a measure of work with a plenitude of pleasure. To increase the latter and reduce the former, I rely upon a number of gadgets and devices.

Though most of these are easily found at nurseries, they make excellent gifts for your gardening friends during the holiday season--or for yourself at any time of the year--because they are so useful.

The task of watering potted plants and flower borders consumes much of my time and energy in the garden; for this reason, I’m always looking for ways to minimize this chore.

Quick Connects

The handiest gadgets in my garden are quick connects (about $6 for a set) that attach hoses to faucets and accessories. All five of my hoses and all my watering accessories are fitted with quick-connect sets, each with one male and one female coupling. With one hand, I can join hoses to faucets and sprinklers to hoses. I’ve found that I need many more male connectors than female because the male coupling attaches to accessories. Fortunately, male and female couplings can be purchased separately.

Another device that saves me lots of time and frustration is a siphon mixer (about $11--I found mine at Armstrong’s in West Los Angeles). Before discovering this brass wonder, I mixed soluble plant food in a bucket, usually 1 tablespoon to a gallon of water, and fed all plants separately.

Although this method encouraged me to observe each plant individually, it required more time than I wanted to invest. Feeding my roses was particularly distasteful. I applied granular fertilizer--quite heroically, I thought--at the base of each plant, suffering spiders in my hair and torturous thorns in my skin. But no more.

Now I prepare a concentrated solution of plant food in a bucket of water, connect the siphon device to the faucet, drop the siphon tube into the bucket, attach the hose and presto--I can feed all my plants with as little effort as it takes to water them. Sometimes I attach a water wand (about $7), which is a long pipe ending in a nozzle, to more easily reach hanging baskets and distant rose bushes. This method of fertilizing has an additional bonus: By wetting the leaves, I am feeding the foliage too.

I find that the more plants I acquire, the more I need to simplify caring for them. Therefore, nearly everything receives the same water-soluble, all-purpose plant food dispensed through a siphon and hose. My roses and fuchsias, now fed regularly and thoroughly, have never been healthier.

Another indispensable device is a water timer (about $12). This requires no chips, no batteries and no electricity. It fits onto the tap and regulates the duration of irrigation. It can be set for a minimum of 30 minutes or for many hours. A water timer is a perfect gift for a busy or forgetful gardener. Incidentally, the most useful timers measure by minutes rather than by gallons.

Inside the House

For watering house plants, many economically priced and imaginatively styled polyethylene watering cans are available in local garden centers and in specialty catalogues.

Especially attractive is a copy of the Haws watering can--the one that has been a British favorite for more than 100 years. This elegant watering can balances its load so that it causes little strain even when filled to capacity. The 1-gallon can costs about $15, and it may be the hardest of these gadgets to find--mine came from Green Thumb in Canoga Park.

Less useful, perhaps, but quite decorative in the garden are brass or bronze faucet heads (from $15). Handles shaped like frogs, hummingbirds, deer, owls or flowers immediately improve drab hose bibbs. And the dull task of hand watering is infinitely more interesting when you can grasp a quail or a whale to open a spigot.

For some time , gardeners have used large, round clay pots to conceal coiled hoses. In the Gardener’s Eden catalogue (P.O. Box 7307, San Francisco 94120-7307) I recently found a specially designed hose pot (about $80 for a 50-foot hose). It’s a great improvement: wide mouth, flat design and a side hole where the hose exits and connects with the faucet.

One-quart atomizer bottles are very useful in my garden. One holds plain water for misting cuttings; another contains diluted fertilizer for foliar feeding of seedlings and cuttings. Others have specific insecticides for spot eradication of aphid, spider mite, whitefly or other insect invaders. With these handy, I’m more likely to repulse insect attacks expeditiously.

A final labor-saving device, still in the experimental stage with me, is a “leaky pipe” drip irrigation system. The results thus far make me feel like a liberated gardener. But that’s another story.