Yes, there is manual effort involved in filling up the bags with water using your garden hose. And remembering when to do so. But if you have just a couple of new trees to look after, it doesn’t take long each time – simply set a reminder on your phone to do so. Pros With this Orbit timer, you have many options for your watering schedule. Set the start time, duration of the watering session, and the frequency you want your sessions. The duration can be anywhere from 1 to 360 minutes and you can water on specific days of the week or in intervals of so many hours. It’s straightforward to program the timer and the dial is large and easy to read. When it comes to watering trees, we always recommend watering deeply and less often instead of frequently and shallowly. Whatever irrigation system you’ve set up for your young or newly planted trees, the Orbit 96781 ‘Buddy HF’ Single-Port Digital Tap Timer allows you to automate the entire watering process. Connect the timer to your outside tap and connect your garden hose to the timer. Being a single-port timer, you can only attach one hose to it, however. The HF in the timer’s name stands for High Flow, in that it delivers 20% more water flow than most other timers. The HydroSure Soaker Hose delivers water directly to the base of multiple newly planted trees and is really good if you have a long length of planted trees or hedging, up a long driveway for example – you won’t waste water. You can also cut the porous rubber hose into lengths to surround each tree and deliver it to the roots by connecting the soaker hose to your garden hose. This isn’t an automatic system yet, so you need to buy a water timer to set up scheduled sessions – see the next review for our recommendation for this.

The HydroSure Soaker Hose gives you wonderful flexibility in how you configure the watering system for your newly planted trees. This hose is 100m of flexible rubber that’s porous along its length. Water seeps out when you connect the hose to a water outlet or to your garden hose, and irrigation of your trees proceeds. Where this really comes into its own is when it’s placed along a new hedge or a long line of freshly planted trees.In this review, we take a look at different watering systems that do the job well, specifically a drip watering system, a soaker hose, and a low-tech bag irrigation system. As none of these are automated when you buy them, we have included a review of an Orbit water timer. The cleverly engineered Universal Drippers can be easily connected to the Flexi Hose and are designed to deliver water from 0 to 40 litres per hour to the surrounding area By programming the optimum watering schedule into a timer, you won’t be constantly anxious about remembering when you last watered these vulnerable plants. Our Runner up is the decidedly low-tech and totally manual Brentmoor Slow Release Tree Watering Bags. This is a 75L PVC bag that you zip up around the base of the tree and fill with water. The water releases through drip irrigation to the roots of the tree during a period of five to seven hours. You will need to buy the timer separately to automate this watering system. This is not essential because you can just turn the tap on manually when needed.

You connect each bag around the tree trunk using the zipper it has and the separate strap (included). However, if your tree is too large for one bag, just zip two bags together and fill each bag with water (using your garden hose) separately. Just refill the bags when you want to deliver the next dose of water to the trees – once or twice a week is usually enough, depending on the weather.

Instruction Booklet

The Flexi Hose carries water from your tap to the Universal Drippers that can be positioned around your garden. The flexibility of the hose makes installation a breeze; plus the hose can be easily cut to create a layout tailored to your garden.

Easily and accurately regulate how much water each dripper delivers ensuring your plants get the water they need to thrive. The bag capacity is 75L of water, released slowly over five to seven hours for even and sustained watering of your trees.

The kit comes with 10 drippers, each capable of watering up to 100cm in diameter therefore providing extensive coverage.

Instead of writing a detailed Buyer’s Guide here for each of the product types in this review, here are links to similar products that we review.

Leaflet

Keeping newly planted trees alive and creating the best environment for them to flourish is a complex task. Set aside your worries about how and when to water them by automating the irrigation process. Setting up an irrigation system is the best way to go.