Lessons about Irrigation

We are having to fix the drip irrigation at the Master Gardener demo garden. We have the vegetable gardens. It consists of a wide variety of growing techniques. We are trying:
Raised beds
in ground
barrels
straw bales
vertical pallet gardening
square gardening
hot house (hoop house) gardening
hydroponics

The thing is that they all need water. Drip irrigation has a main line which is a thick tube and then you poke holes in it to attach smaller hoses with different ends for different needs. We main use the sprayer ends for the raised beds, barrels, straw bales and vertical gardens. The hoop house has individual pots that we are using drippers.

Words of advise:

• Do not have kinks in the small hoses and make sure they are not pulled to tight so they bend sharply at the connection to the main line.
• When you create the access holes in the line, try to make them all at the same level r side. If on comes from the bottom and one is at the top the water pressure will be different.
• Make sure you don't have too many sprinklers on each line. The water pressure will suffer and you won't be able to water all your bed. In the veggie garden it is hard because we don't have a map that shows which beds are on the same line and I don;t know how many lines are connected to the zones.
• When you are done for the season you need to make sure the irrigation heads are closed. It would be good manners to coil them up individually and put them in an extra pot to keep them together over the winter.
• In the hoop house coil the unused one individually into holders to keep them ready for next year.
• The irrigation heads in the cold frames do not turn off individually but have a shut off valve - one for each set of heads.

If you have the wrong head and want to change it, chances are that you can't pull the head off the hose so you will have to cut it off. Cut it close to the head but not so close that you cut part of the head. You can then push on the new head. You can reuse the other head so take a knife and use it to remove the leftover piece of rubber tubing.

I will write more as I learn it.

Vegetable garden

My friend Sue and I have started a couple of raised beds at the community garden. They both had not been used for about 3 years so the first step was weeding. YUCK. There was a grass that would send out roots one to two feet long and it was all through both beds.

The first bed I started to clear contained a surprise. I started clearing at one corner and pulled out a little bird nest. There was 4 eggs in it. The mama bird and left as soon I had arrived but I didn't see where she had come from. So I put the nest back and planted some weeds back around it. We decided to clear to other bed instead.

The next time I cam out there the first thing I did was check on the bird nest. IT WAS GONE....completely. I think someone must have taken it because there was not a trace of it around. I am still sad that the little mama bird lost her chicks but I also think it was not the best spot for a nest. I mean this bed is in the middle of a lot of other raised beds with people coming around every day. I hope next year she chooses her site a little wiser.

Today - June 23, 2014
We cleaned the second bed and will be ready to plant it. We inherited strawberries in the first bed. Now there are peppers, 4 tomatoes (need to find out what kind) and a chinese green that went to seed.  Today we planted
1 - Silver Fir tomato
Radishes
Carrorts
Lettuce

Next time we will plant the second bed.