When it’s too little you have to step up your watering game. We have been adding automatic watering solutions into our gardens and it’s been wonderful. A problem that we have is getting water to areas that have no access to water. I’ve been filling up empty cat litter containers and hauling them around and it’s worked. Until we planted around 80 mums in areas without access to water last fall. This fall we will probably plant more mums and we have about 1k spring bulbs on order.
Can I still haul water ? Yes, it would just take a lot more jugs. As it happened we were in a local farm store picking up chicken food and walked past the sprayer systems. This tank was selling for $69.99 and I think we might have purchased it on sale for even less than that.
https://www.familyfarmandhome.com/spot-sprayer-877675.html
PRO’s
The hose is long. I can sit on the tractor and spray from that position or I can stand and walk around with it.
The electric hooks up to the battery on the tractor. We did do some modifications so that it can remain connected to the batter at all times. That way I don’t have to attach it each time I want to water.
The tank is large enough to handle all the watering tasks we currently have with just one fill.
The water wand has fairly good flow and you can clip it so that you don’t have to keep squeezing to get continuous flow.
Tank fits in our lawn cart which makes it portable.
Tank is light weight when empty.
CON’s
The hose is long. I have had it slip under the wheel of the cart or the tractor. If I’m not paying attention this could be bad because I also use the mower to blow debris off the driveway as I’m going up and down watering. Don’t laugh it works, sort of.
The electric connection to the battery is also long and I have had this slip down and get caught and cut. Easy enough fix just a pain and again something that I just need to keep an eye on.
The wand is held to the hose with a clamp and that can come loose which is exciting when you are holding it and suddenly you are taking a shower. Easy fix.
Tank is not towable.
After each use some water does remain in the tank so if you have added anything you either have to empty it by hand and clean it out or be aware that the next tank of water still has product in it.
REVIEW
The task of watering is so much simpler now. This has really made a difference in keeping things alive during the weeks of heat, sun, and no rain. In addition I’m a lot more diligent in fertilizing once a month. We buy the packets of fertilizer for the fertigation system and I steal, um borrow, um use without asking half of a packet at least once a month to fertilize all my flowers. I just dump it in while I’m filling the tank and water as normal.
This tank has also made it possible to do big jobs like treating the entire driveway. We have an asphalt driveway and over the last few years moss has been an issue. It’s now simple to mix up a batch of water and baking soda and spray the entire driveway down. The baking soda changes the PH and kills the moss. It does not hurt other living things unless of course they need the same PH as the moss. The only thing I need to remember is to dump and rinse after I finish.
Another thing we had been unable to do was power wash the driveway. We have a battery power washer that we can run using water from this tank! This is HUGE because after treating that moss we follow up with the power washer to remove it from the driveway. Doing this will allow us to eventually refinish the asphalt. We also found the power washing to be important because treating the moss with baking soda makes it slippery so getting all of that off the driveway makes it safer to walk.
We have talked about getting another one to use for mixing weed killer because we do sometimes have a lot of poison ivy. For now that’s probably not going to happen because it’s under control but it is an option. I love having it setup so that I don’t have to connect it and disconnect it from the battery every time I want to use it because I use it a lot. So far it doesn’t seem to have had any negative effect on the tractor or the battery. For the most part the tank stays in the cart unless I know we are going to be hauling something heavy or large that I don’t want to put on top of the tank then I just pick it up and put it aside because it is light weight and not so large that it is awkward to handle.
We do keep the tractor, cart, and tank all in the garage protected from the elements. Before we started doing that we would move the tank to a protected area after each use.
For us this has been an excellent purchase and expanded what we can do and made what we were doing much simpler. Each and every time I use it, it makes me happy.
