Garden timers

Hey group,

Getting to the point where time is money and I shouldn't be spending 20 min each day watering. Any suggestions on a good automatic timer? I've read a number of reviews on Lowes and many have issues. Wondered if any of you had good suggestions. I need at minimum two settings and perhaps three - one for the grass and one/two for the garden. I have about 100 sq ft of garden.

We're going to invest in a drip system for our beds. If you do go with a timer, you might check out the timers used for lawn watering systems to see if they'd work for you.

I have a Rainbird timer. Probably really intended for lawns. The lawns, trees, and SFG are all on their own zones, which I can program to start and stop whenever. It has 16 zones I think, and cost about $50.

I had rainbird too. Never had a problem and once I studied the manual, it made sense programming it (nothing is user friendly to me)

I spent about $30 each for 2 fancy brand-name one-station timers. (Multi-station timers cost way more.)

The one on the kitchen balcony works great. I need the fine tuning for containers that must be watered around the clock during our brutal summers.

The one in the Salad Bar has never worked right. That could just be one defective unit, but I'm replacing it with a simple $10 manual timer. I will always be in my gardens once or twice a day, so, for me that's the best answer for veggies. That way, I control the flow, duration, and timing. It's so much more efficient to just turn the dial a little more or less for heat waves and cold spells, and leave it off altogether on rainy days. I'm going to put one of those on the new garden, too.

We still have the electronic ones for lawns and fruit trees.

One hint: whatever you get, make sure they're all the same. We bought ours at different times from different companies. It's a real pain to remember how to re-program each one, or just to do a manual test when you're tweaking the system, when they all have different ways of doing things.

I will check the brand names later and post again.

countrynaturals wrote:I spent about $30 each for 2 fancy brand-name one-station timers. (Multi-station timers cost way more.)

The one on the kitchen balcony works great. I need the fine tuning for containers that must be watered around the clock during our brutal summers.

The one in the Salad Bar has never worked right. That could just be one defective unit, but I'm replacing it with a simple $10 manual timer. I will always be in my gardens once or twice a day, so, for me that's the best answer for veggies. That way, I control the flow, duration, and timing. It's so much more efficient to just turn the dial a little more or less for heat waves and cold spells, and leave it off altogether on rainy days. I'm going to put one of those on the new garden, too.

We still have the electronic ones for lawns and fruit trees.

One hint: whatever you get, make sure they're all the same. We bought ours at different times from different companies. It's a real pain to remember how to re-program each one, or just to do a manual test when you're tweaking the system, when they all have different ways of doing things.

I will check the brand names later and post again.

Melnor is the one that never worked right and also leaked. Orbit is the one I do like.