Farmington- The "one inch per week" "rule" is a very vague guideline at best. To put it another way, it's completely unreliable. How much you need to water depends on the specific crop, rainfall, heat, your type of soil, sun exposure, if your soil is mulched or not, etc. Nobody can say definitively that your plants need x-amount of water. Sorry, I realize that doesn't help much. Water until your soil is moist. Not just on the surface but deep down. Certain plants like consistent moisture. Some like to dry out a bit between waterings. If it's been hot, you'll need to water more. If it's been cool you might not need to water for a while. Sandy soil dries out quicker than clay. Mulched soil retains moisture whereas unmulched dries out quick in summer. You just have to get a feel for it. Rodney

I'm not sure what Gilmour intended them to be used for. I purchased mine to fertigate faster than I could with a watering can. They *are* faster than a watering can. They will certainly work if you want to foliar feed though you might want something that will give you more of a mist. These don't give a super-fine mist. I found that there are limited options for fertigation: 1) Hose-end sprayers. These are accurate but in order to get the accuracy they significantly reduce the flow with a restricted venturi tube or similar. This allows them to work accurately for most people. These take ~5x longer to water, they cost ~$10-$20. 2) Source siphon systems - these include things like Hozon (~$15-$30) and Mazzei(venturi tube) injectors (around $100 by the time you get a bypass system installed). The Hozon and etc are all at set rates of like 16:1 or sometimes 20:1. Those ratios are too small for my liking. I'd have to refill a 5 gallon bucket with solution too often during the summer. The Mazzei injectors might work better. I didn't try one yet. I don't see how they could give full flow and inject at the correct rate. If someone has experience with them please let me know! 3) "Proportional mixing" systems like the EZ-Flo fertilizer injector. These do not work. They do not mix at the advertised rates. ~$65 wasted. You can waste another $25 trying to get it to work. It still won't work. 4) Dosmatic/Dosatron/Mixrite style pump injectors. These will work as advertised. I bought a Dosmatic 1% yesterday. It's still on the way. The unit itself was ~$260 shipped. It will also require a bypass setup which is another ~$20 if you build it yourself. They also have wear parts that will need to be replace yearly (for ~$10). They will operate at full flow and have adjustable injection rates. They go as high as $500 for some units with more options and higher flow/pressure rates. I've basically tried all of these except the Mazzei style injectors and I'm landing on a dosmatic style system. By the time you try every other kind and find it lacking you've spent 3/4 the price of a dosmatic anyway. With a 500:1 injection rate (~1.5 tsp / gallon) I can water 2500 gallons from a 5 gallon bucket of concentrated solution. This is at full flow with perfect injection rates. It costs more and it makes a little pumping noise when you operate it but it will be worth it to me. Ask yourself this: how much is your time worth to you? If you use a hose-end sprayer you will spend 5x the time watering. If it takes you an hour a day to water instead of 20 minutes that's 243 hours a year. Even if you only have to water once a day for half the year that's 121 hours saved. 3 whole work weeks. This now sounds like a hard sell for a dosmatic but, shrug, I've tried everything else and got fed up. I'll make a video of my installation and show you the Ez-Flo that I had in there before.

SO happy to find this thread- I am lugging 150 feet of hose around my back yard and am so tired of it. I have to wrap it around my body and lean into it like I am a draft animal! To add insult to injury my husband has a mental block about winding it up properly so that it doesn't knot up when I am dragging it back out- I swear most of the cursing from my back yard is over his winding up the hose. I am currently using old Lifetime guaranteed hoses that the company has now replaced three times for me- I really got my money's worth, lol. Which leads me to ask about the DAP company and how reliable we think their lifetime guarantee on the Pro series is? I know no one can make my mind up for me, but a total of $90 (hose is $70 plus two 9.95 shipping charges) is a lot of money for me even if I am getting two 75 footers for that price. Plus I need a set for the front yard! Just want to be sure I am not making a mistake and I don't live near enough anywhere to go have a feel for myself.

A submersible pump is more efficient and has less problems long term. JMHO.