There's a fortune waiting for someone who can design a garden hose and sprayer that works!

Thank goodness for some rain. We’ve been very dry here in Staffordshire until the rains came a few days ago. The plants and vegetables are growing rapidly now with this liquid gold and my trees simply love it. If they could smile, they would.

The other reasons I’m so happy to see the rain is that I don’t have to get my morning and evening soaking in the garden. I’ve got five hose systems: one in the greenhouse, another for the plants either side, in the vegetable cage, a fourth for watering the patio and urns in front of the house and the final one for other pots, hanging baskets and wall planters. Apart from delivering water they all share another common denominator – they are guaranteed to get me into an absolute fury.

All the hoses kink as they are pulled along and have to be manually straightened out to secure a flow of water. The tap end adaptors regularly leak and blow off – the first soaking. The sprayers – I have four of them – pull off the hose giving me the second soaking, Finally, the sprayers themselves all drip and leak – even ones costing £30+ - wet feet!

It’s a nightmare and Mrs GG simply laughs at my soaking shirt, trousers, hair and shoes and tells me I should be more careful!! Careful indeed. I treat the wretched things with kid gloves and they always repay me with another soaking. The final insult is that our water is metered so all this loss is costing me a small fortune for the privilege of getting very wet and cross.

The hoses are all of different makes and are sold as being anti-kink. Anti mind you, not resistant. I’ve managed to slow down the process of the sprayers coming away from the hose by binding the with a few layers of electrical tape and this seems to create a better seal. But why can’t the spray producers and hose makers get together to ensure they both fit each other.

Last week in the greenhouse the sprayer came off and I wasn’t quick enough to change the direction of the water before it damaged one of the tomato plants. I cannot be the only gardener in Britain fed up to the back teeth with this problem.

Happy Gardening!

The Grumpy Gardener