Swan’s New XFlex™ Has Everything ....but the Kinks

From the innovation experts at Swan comes the new XFlex™, a truly revolutionary garden hose that combines all the most sought-after features in garden hose functionality–from lightweight and long-lasting to kink-resistant–for the landscaper and active home gardener.

Driven by consumer demand for a lightweight, compact garden hose that's similar to expandable fabric hoses yet much more durable and long-lasting, Swan spent two years developing the technologies behind XFlex™ to meet its customers' needs, as well as to create the most kink-resistant garden hose on the market today.

One of these technologies is Swan's new XFlex™ Continuous Flow™ Filament, a flexible, plastic, X-shaped filament that runs through the center of the hose. The "X" shape of the filament, with its four open V-shaped areas, allows for a continuous flow of water throughout the hose to prevent kinks, The technology is so powerful that even if you fold the XFlex™ garden hose over itself multiple times, the open pathways provided by the filament allow the water to keep running, pushing through even the most severe kinks! This is a groundbreaking advancement in garden hose design that makes the XFlex™ stand apart from any garden hose ever made.

Another new technology can be found in the composition of the XFlex™ garden hose, which features a proprietary Thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) formula. This TPE formula makes the XFlex™ weight less than four pounds, which is 50 percent lighter than your standard PVC garden hose! Now you have the ability to maneuver a garden hose around your watering area which much greater ease. This proprietary formula also makes the XFlex™ remain extremely flexible, even at temperatures below zero degrees Fahrenheit.

According to Swan, the combination of the XFlex™ Continuous Flow™ Filament with the proprietary TPE formula is essential to the success of the new XFlex™ hose.

"We made 'flat' PVC hoses during the 1990s," says Ben Williams, vice president of product development at Swan, "but the real advance came when we switched to more flexible, energetic materials for the hose and the development of the X-shaped filament, which prevents kinking. The key to the XFlex™ hose is combining these two technologies.

Additional features of the XFlex™ include how exceptionally compact it is: Once the water is off, the XFlex™ garden hose goes flat, allowing you to easily coil it into an oval shape for a variety of storage options. Once the water is turned back on, the XFlex™ garden hose fully enlarges for optimum use.

The couplings on the XFlex™ garden hose are also first-rate. In addition to having ergonomic grips for easy and tight attachments to the water source and accessories, the male coupling features Swan's SpinMALE™ technology, which allows it to rotate 360 degrees like the female coupling. Now you can simply attach a nozzle or sprinkler to you or water hose with just a spin of the male coupling, without having to twist on the accessories or turn the hose. With both male and female couplings now able to spin, the XFlex™ garden hose can remain motionless, avoiding the actions that can cause kinking. The grips plus the couplings are also crush-prooof up to 1,500 PSI.

With a powerful 400 PSI burst strength, the XFlex™ is also a heavy-duty garden hose, with Swan making it in a variety of lengths to handle any home watering need. The XFlex™ is currently available on Swan's website, swanhose.com, and at several regional retailers. Plans are to also have the XFlex™ available at several major national retailers in the future.

Swan is confident they have created in XFlex™ a hose that not only fulfills its mission to enrich lives by delivering water where it's needed most, but also thoroughly addresses all the pain points consumers have had with garden hoses in the past by giving them an all-inclusive and completely user-friendly product.

"The excitement we have for the XFlex™ hose is really because it will give the consumer the very best hose experience they have ever had," Williams says."Traditional hoses frustrate people, and the latest generations of fabric hoses do as well because of their poor durability. XFlex™ offers the consumer everything but the kinks!"

New to Gardening? Here’s a Good Place to Start

You’ve decided this is the year you’re going to start a garden (and reap all the mood-lifting, fitness-improving and healthy-eating benefits that go with it!), but you’re not sure where to begin. Swan’s here to help with several easy-to-follow tips on how to get off on the right foot and make your gardening dreams a reality.

Choose The Right Location

The best place for your garden should take into consideration several things. First, you’ll want to make sure your garden is in a place you can see regularly so you’ll be more inclined to tend to it. Just make sure it’s not too close to the house. This location should also get at least six hours of sunlight a day and have good air circulation, but not be a windy spot. It should also ideally have level ground and loose, rich soil with good drainage. Plus, you’ll want to make sure you have a water source such as a spigot nearby for a garden hose to reach with ease. That way you can avoid lugging the garden hose around your property, saving your energy for the garden itself! Convenient access to garden tools and storage would be helpful as well.

Locate The Sunny Spots

Perhaps the most important factor when choosing your garden site is that it gets at least six hours of full sun over its entirety a day. Most vegetables, herbs and fruits need at least that much to thrive. One way to find out is to monitor the pattern of light and shadow over your planned garden location during the day. Place wooden stakes in the areas of shadow and then record the times when the garden site is fully covered with sunlight and when the shadows appear. If you don’t have the necessary amount of sun over the whole garden, you should adjust the size, position or even the location of the garden site.

Stay In The Zone

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) divided the country and Puerto Rico into 13 “plant hardiness zones” to let you know which plants will do best in your garden based on the climate you live in. For example, Zone 1 includes areas up north such as Fairbanks, Alaska, and the northern islands of Canada, Zone 11 includes most of Hawaii, and Zones 12 and 13 are in Puerto Rico. Each zone is then further divided for greater accuracy.

Each plant hardiness zone is generally 10 degrees warmer (or colder) in an average winter than the adjacent zone, with the higher the zone number, the warmer the climate. So if a plant is “hardy to zone 5” and your garden is in zone 6, that plant will survive in your garden. However, if your garden is in zones up to 4, it’s too cold to grow that particular plant.

Most seeds and plants come with a label listing their plant hardiness zone, so be sure to look for it. To discover your zone, add your zip code here.

Pick The Right Plants

Once you discover which plants will do best in your neck of the woods, select those that match your particular growing conditions and garden space. If you get lots of sun, choose sun-loving plants. If you want to grow crops such as melons and pumpkins that need lots of room, make sure your garden can accommodate them.

You might also want to give native plants a try. Native plants are adapted to your local climate and soil conditions and have many advantages. According to the USDA, native plants don’t require fertilizers, need fewer pesticides than lawns, require less water, help prevent erosion, reduce air pollution, promote biodiversity and provide shelter and food for wildlife.

Spruce Up Your Soil

Healthy soil is essential to the success of your garden. When just starting out, you can invest in new soil that’s rich in nutrients and well-drained. You can also have your soil tested before planting to determine its needs. Try purchasing a soil-testing kit or send a sample to your local county extension office found here, and then amend the soil as necessary.

Find Your Frost Dates

Knowing your growing season is also important so you plant and harvest at just the right time to protect your crops from changes in the weather. First, you’ll want to find the last average spring frost date for your area so you don’t put your plants out prematurely and have them die from the cold. You’ll also want to find the first average fall frost date so that you harvest your plants or move them indoors before winter weather sets in. Just add your zip code here for the most recent frost dates in your location.

Also check our handy growing guide below for zones 3–9 for a general timeline on when to plant and harvest a variety of popular vegetables. First find your plant hardiness zone, then check what months to start seedlings indoors, plant seeds or transplant seedlings outdoors, and harvest (but always go by the frost dates first for planting outside and harvesting).

Feed And Water Regularly

We’ve mentioned the importance of starting with good soil when planning your garden, but you also need to give your plants top-quality nutrition along the way with the right plant food. Research the needs of your plants and follow the directions on the food label.

As far as watering is concerned, Swan has an amazing variety of products to accomplish your every watering need. You might want to invest in one of our soaker hoses. Soaker hoses are recycled-rubber hoses that have tiny holes or “pores” along their lengths that drip water directly to plants’ roots systems. This not only reduces evaporation, but also uses up to 70 percent less water than a traditional sprinkler, making soaker hoses very cost-effective and eco-friendly. Some of our more elaborate soaker hose systems include our EZ-Connect® System Connectors to extend soaker hoses or otherwise customize your watering system for your garden’s needs. Check them all out here.

Of course we also have light- and medium-duty garden hoses for low-pressure watering needs such as watering delicate plants. You can take a look at our offerings here. In contrast, Swan’s heavy-duty garden hoses, as the name implies, are designed for the more demanding tasks of watering your garden, watering your lawn and cleanup. Click here for all of Swan’s heavy-duty hoses.

To learn more about the different types of garden hoses Swan offers, read our “Garden Hose Buying Guide” article here. To shop the entirety of Swan’s product line, which includes accessories such as nozzles and watering wands, visit our website here.

Now that you know some of the important first steps to starting your vegetable garden, it’s time to get out and grow!

Vegetable Growing Guide

Winterizing Your Garden

 

With autumn upon us, it’s that time of year to start preparing your vegetable garden, flower beds and the landscaping around your home for the colder-weather months ahead. We know it can be an arduous task, considering the harvesting, cleaning and raking that needs to be done. But fall is also an excellent time to keep that gardening spirit going a bit longer and plant something new.

We’ve asked the folks at Lehigh Valley Home and Garden in Allentown, Pa., to give us their expert advice on what’s top priority to tackle this season. Here are their tips on what to pick, prune—and plant—as you begin putting your garden to bed for winter.  

What To Pick Before the Frost  

For many regions, and especially in the Northeastern United States, it’s time to harvest an array of fruits and vegetables, including cabbage, celery, corn, eggplant, garlic, leeks, melons, onions, peppers, potatoes, shallots and squash. You’ll want to pick tomatoes as well, especially if the weather has generally been very dry with sporadic heavy rains. This will cause tomatoes to crack if they’re not harvested in time.

What to Prune and When

Many people wonder, Is it OK to prune in fall? While the general rule is no, there are exceptions. According to Lehigh Valley Home and Garden, while spring is typically the best time of year to prune your trees, shrubs and plants (either before or after they flower depending on the type), many of them can handle a little trim during autumn as well. You’ll want to pay particular attention to removing any dying limbs and diseased branches before they infect and destroy the rest of the plant.

 

Once your annuals start shriveling and fading, it’s time for them to be removed as well. After the first frost, any remaining annuals should also be removed. Dying and rotting annuals are an eyesore and an invitation for pests, foul odors and disease. The same holds true for weeds. They should be dug up from the roots or they may very well return with a vengeance.

 

What To Plant in a Fall Garden

There are a variety of things you can plant this time of year. In the Northeast, it’s a wonderful time to get shrubs and trees in the ground. Planting them in the fall, when the weather is cooler and their leaves are dropping, allows them to focus all of their energy on developing a robust root system before they need to start putting out new leaves in the spring.

 

 

 

There’s also still time to plant vegetables with a short maturity time. Cool weather crops include root vegetables such as beets, carrots and garlic; cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower and kale; lettuces and spinach.

 

Many perennials also benefit from being planted in the fall. These include coreopsis, dianthus, hardy chrysanthemums, ornamental grasses, peonies, phlox and sedum. For additional pops of color around your home, pansies and violas can handle the cooler weather, as can ornamental cabbage, kale and peppers, red grasses and millet.

 

You can also plan ahead for spring by planting bulbs now for those lovely harbingers of the season such as daffodils, hyacinths and tulips.

 

Fall Garden Prep for Spring Planting

Most people prepare their soil for planting in the spring, but you can amend it now with compost or manures, says Lehigh Valley Home and Garden. At the very least, you should top up to bring your soil to the desired level.

 

 

For those, especially in the Northeast, September is a good time to apply weed killer to your lawn, followed by lime in November. Adding lime will help increase the soil pH level to make more available the nutrients needed for proper growth.

Mulch should also be added around the base of any perennials that will be left outside to withstand the winter.

 

So spend some time this season ticking off this fall-chore checklist before temperatures tumble. Everything you do now to properly winterize your vegetable garden, flower beds and the landscaping around your home helps smooth the way for a healthy, beautiful growing season next year.