MG 3/8" soaker hose "trick"

[aclum]

Hi,

I wanted to re-do the irrigation set-up in 6 of my "non-tomato" raised beds and decided to try the new (to me, anyway) 3/8" Miracle Gro Pro Advantage ?? Soaker hose. It's about halfway in size between the regular old rubber soaker hose and the 1/4" drip irrigation rubber soaker hose.

With my particular set-up I needed more female hose fittings than came with the hose kit. Looking through my old "gardening junk," I came across some old 1/2" drip irrigation female hose fittings attached to a couple of inches of the 1/2" drip main line tubing. As it turned out, the 3/8" MG soaker hose could be pushed a few inches into the 1/2" tubing to make a snug fit. To hold it all in place, I first wrapped a couple of inches of that self stick (supposedly) waterproof tape - which is very stretchy - around the connection, then wrapped black electrical tape over the stretchy tape to keep things in place. Finally, just to make sure things didn't come apart, I put cable ties around the tape on either side of the seam and cinched everything tightly in place. Worked great!! Instead of using the end cap fitting that came with the hose, I just folded a bit of the end back on itself and secured it in a permanent kink with some cable tie.

So, if you have any old rain-drip or other 1/2" drip hose fittings and hose, you can use these with the MG hose. The plain 1/2" hose would probably also make good non-leak sections between beds where you don't want the water dripping out from the soaker hose. You could probably also use a section of the 1/2" hose to mend sections of soaker hose.

Make sure you use have the flow restrictor disc that comes with the MG female fittings at the starting end of your set-up.

Anyway, just thought some of you might be interested.

Anne