Garden Hoses 

Purchase garden hoses based on size of yard, type of soil

Hoses and water sprinklers are two of the most useful garden tools you'll ever own. Sears has a number of hoses for you to choose from and if you don't know which one to purchase, well, we can help with that, too.

Before you purchase a garden hose, you need to think about your lawn and garden. How big are they? The bigger the yard, the longer the hose you'll need. (And you may need a portable hose reel cart to get the hose from point A to B.) Now think about your watering needs. What's the soil like? Is it clay or sandy? How can you tell whether you have clay or sandy soil? Well, clay absorbs water slowly. Sandy drinks it in. Once clay is saturated, it holds the water longer than sandy soil. Look at your yard during a dry season. Is it cracked? Then it's most likely clay. Look at it after a heavy rain. If there are puddles for days, it's clay. The types of weeds that you battle are another indicator of the type of soil. Chicory, creeping buttercup and coltsfoot, for example, grow in clay soil. (Sears has all the fertilizers and garden sprayers you need to feed your yard and to kill those weeds, by the way.) So when watering clay soil, you need to water slowly to give the ground time to drink it all up, but you don't have to water it often. Sandy soil will stand up to a heavy watering, but will need watered more often. Then there's loamy soil. It's a combination, giving you the best of both worlds. It holds moisture and drains well. Armed with this information, let's shop for a garden hose.

There are three types of garden hoses. Going from less expensive and lightest to the most expensive and heaviest are vinyl, combination of vinyl and rubber, and rubber. Weather can take its toll on the vinyl hoses, so choose that if you live where the temperatures don't soar or plummet. Rubber kinks less than the other types. If you're going to have to water often, such as with sandy soil, you want a garden hose that's designed to be kink-free, because you'll be using it often. Rubber is a good option. Since you don't have to water clay soil as often, any type of hose would work well. However, since you have to water for a longer period of time, check out our timers to use with the garden hose attached to a sprinkler. You can set the timer to water whenever you want for as long as you want.

The length of hose to purchase depends on how long of a reach you need. The bigger your lawn and garden, the longer the hose you need. However, you can also purchase couplings, which are used to connect multiple hoses. Sears has a number of trusted brands of garden hoses from which you can choose, including Teknor, Ray Padula, Legacy and Gilmour, just to name a few. Of course, many of the garden hoses are made by Craftsman, America's most trusted brand. Craftsman, as well as other manufacturers, offer self-straightening and non-kinking hoses. Some hoses have built-in protection against mold and mildew, which can shorten the life of garden hoses. And don't forget hose nozzles, so you can choose exactly what spray strength you want for different areas of your lawn and garden.