Automatic Irrigation

Does anyone have experience of any of the auto irrigation kits available, are they worth the money ect. As a caravanner we want to be away as much as possible but cant bare to neglect the garden after all this work.
Advice gratefully received.
ttfn

 

Don't get the Hoselock timers. The place where I bought my last one got fed up with all the complaints and stopped stocking them. This year i have been using a Claber practico timer and it has been very good. I have used it to water all my growbags in the greenhouse and then I dug a hole and extended the pipe out of the greenhouse and down the garden to where I keep my blue poppies and primulas. As the outside did not need watering that often when I am at home the outside section has a valve so normally it is switched off. Like you I have a caravan and last summer I was away for one stretch of 4 1/2weeks. The plants looked very well when I returned home.
I had a Hoselock watering kit and i have been able to fit that to my timer and the Claber parts seem to be interchangeable. They do save you a lot of time. Watering the tomatoes every day wastes a lot of time.
If I was doing it again I would get a timer that will switch on twice a day. Last summer there were some days when I thought they could have benefitted from watering in the morning and in the afternoon.
Oh and I use drippers in the greenhouse and sprinklers outside. I did have a lot of very small seedlings outside and I arranged those around the sprinklers. They literally kept hundreds of plants alive while I was away in that heat.

 

Thanks Geoff thats just the Quality of advice one has come to expect from this site. Now to find the kit. Watch this space.
ttfn

 

I have used several Gardena timers for a few years now with no problems, and would recommend them.
If you use drippers set to about 2L/hour, they clog with lime scale after only 2 or three weeks in hot climates. Set them to 15-20L/hour, and run the water for a shorter time, and they don't clog for at least three or four months. You can't have as many on one thin pipe then, but 12-15 works OK.
Nik