One of my noted problems with the garden the past few years is that I am not very good at watering when needed. This is a problem with my front yard planters, also. The root of the problem is that it is a royal pain. To turn the water on in the front yard, I have to crawl between the porch post and wall and then step down to reach the spigot. The hose is a pain to unreel. For the back garden, I had to drag out the heavy rubber hose into the garden, do my watering and then drag it back to the house. Not a quick process. And my hands would be black from the oxidized rubber coming off the hose.

This year I bought three hose racks with spigots. In the front I’ll install the rack directly opposite the front door at the end of the lilacs. I’ll run a heavy rubber hose to the front spigot. I have a 25-foot light flexible hose on the rack, and I’ll leave the spigot on the house on and turn the water on and off at the rack.

In the back, I’ll have one rack in the garden, and the otherwhere the existing hose rack is. I have a splitter at the outside spigot and have rubber hoses going to each rack. There will be a 50-foot light flexible hose on each rack. Again, as in the front, I’ll leave the house spigot on and control the water at the new racks.

Thanks to my new planters I am on schedule with my spring planting. The raised planters took a lot of work out of planting and it will make weeding much easier and protect the plants from the rabbits. We’ll see if my blaming the rabbits last year was correct, or if the squirrels were helping them out.

I planted Red Romaine Lettuce, Pak Choi, Beets, and Red Onions (The sign said Candy Onions which are Yellow and I didn’t check the sticks in the trays. I should know better.) I don’t know when these turn red, but I planted them for green onions. I’ll find out in a month or so.