17 May Mon 2010
It's Irrigation Time
After the extremely wet season we had last year, I was a little reluctant to install the drip tapes in the garden--seems like when they were installed last year is when the clouds wouldn't quit watering the gardens. With a year-round creek, small pond, pump, and drip lines, this farm is better equipped for drought than deluge.
The ground started drying out, new plants needed watering in, so one day last week was devoted to the drip tape project. All the drip tape has served one life in a nursery before, so the tapes are all lengths and in all kinds of condition, but you can't really tell if it leaks or not until it's all hooked up to the water supply. It's a pretty tedious, muddy, and frustrating job, to say the least. I just keep thinking through the whole installation ordeal of how easy it is to turn the valve to water a garden and then go do something else while the plants are quietly being watered right at the soil--oh, and I have one of those handy-dandy fertilizer injectors so the plants can be fed manure tea while they are being watered!
Anyway, I dug through the big basket of "footballs and watermelons" to pick out what looked like good candidates for the tomato patch. The project started out like this:
The propane bottle is for a heat source to heat up the 3/4" plastic pipe (the "trunk line", so to speak), ever so slightly, so the fittings will slip in easier. The big pruners are for cutting the 3/4" pipe, and the handy-dandy aluminun tool box has all the fittings and pieces and parts (well, most of them) to do the irrigation stuff.
The tomato patch went fairly well. All three beds got "drip taped" with no major leaks or problems. Okay, we're on a roll, so I go to another garden, I call it the Pond Garden because it's next to the pond, and I installed tape on 2 beds of peppers and one bed of eggplant then turned on the water.
I thought to myself "It's supposed to be drip tape, not a sprinkler system". After messing around with the leaks, getting really wet and sort of frustrated, I was able to turn it back into drip tape.
Now for the mulch of leaves--the plants will be set for the season! Drip tape....it's a great way to water :)