Saturday, March 8, 2014

OFF TO WORK ON AN IRRIGATION PLAN




At the farm today working on connecting a drip irrigation system like this to some of the raised beds so we can get growing.  Once the freezes are over of course as another one is forecast for next week.

How ironic, it looks like rain today too!  If only we could count on regular rain and not worry about irrigation, ha. 

Hope you are having a good start to the weekend!  Thanks for yesterday's advice on the unused raised beds.

10 comments:

  1. Keep us up to date on this. I have had trouble with consistent water pressure with my soaker hoses. Not sure how to solve this.

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    1. I have really good pressure, so far. Of course, in the bed closest to the faucet, I have too much pressure I think. I'll just have to see how it goes. I'm not sure how far you have your soaker hose from your main faucet but I think the 3/4" hose I used as the 'source' hose in running from the house to the garden made a huge difference.

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  2. We don't have enough pressure, or water for that matter, for a soaker hose unfortunately. We have found running drippers to solve those problems. It takes longer to water the garden though.

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    1. Running drippers? Not sure I know what that is. But you must be doing something right with all the great food you produce. :-)

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  3. I must admit I was wondering how you were going to keep your veg alive in your hot summers when you aren't there all week. Looks great.

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    1. Thank you! Yes, this is being creative but it's what we need to do to get water to the garden area. Now I have to connect a timer so it will do it all for me on the days I'm not there. Fingers crossed. :-)

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  4. I notice you mention you don't have a lot of water pressure ... I think you'd do better using that manifold you showed on another page and running separate lines to each box .... allowing on/off/low or high pressure adjustments to each line ... just sayin.... Good luck..

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    1. No, we do have great water pressure. Almost too much actually. Well, when I first turned it on it was slow in the farthest bed but once the soaker got wetter it seemed to work better. It was just the bed closest to the faucet that had too much pressure. I'll figure it out through trial and error, ha. I will thoughl be using the manifold to create different watering zones eventually. Thanks!!

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  5. For my irrigation system, I found a timer to be invaluable. If I tried to water without it, I'd forget to turn the system off, and go out the next day to find it still running, and all my nutrients washed away from the plants. The low cost kind you just twist to turn on and it runs the set amount of time and turns itself off is low cost and wonderful. I can set it to run a half to two hours, depending on how conditions are. I found the kind that you set to go on every day for an hour or so to fail within a few weeks.

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    1. Yes, will definitely get a timer. Now the kind you describe first sounds great but I'm not there every day to turn it on. Hmm...I do have one of those electronic ones, I'm going to have to give it a try. The good thing is I can have 2nd Family come check on it to make sure it's going on and off. I'm just hoping it works for a few months to give us a first crop. Fingers crosses!! Thank you for the tip, I will look into those simpler ones as well. :-)

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