Saturday - I finished drilling the holes in the pipes of bed number 1 tonight, Yay. BUT when I turned on the water ,major fail, the supply end of the bed was washing away while the far end of the middle pipe had no water. I'm thinking that I can remove the half of the pipe closest to the supply pipe and replace them with pipes from another beds with smaller and fewer holes drilled in them.
Sunday - Spread wood chips on the paths this evening, used all the chips on hand, still have 40 foot of path to do. Put some broccoli seed to spout.
Monday - Number 1 son and I got another load of wood chips this morning. While he spread them on the remaining paths I planted the mats I had made up. Hint - have plenty of stones on hand if the wind is blowing.
Now have onions, turnips, swiss chard, two types of beets, two type of carrots, spinach and lettuce in the ground. Also planted the cabbage, hope they do O.K.. Then spread some compost on bed #1. Cut the bottoms out of some milk jugs to put over the cabbage as it still gets down to mid 30s at night. Was going to plant peas but decided to soak them first.Tuesday - Took the wife to see Alice in Wonderland this A.M., not a bad flick. After we returned I planted the peas that I had set to soak last night. Also sowed some ground cover seed (field peas and oats) on two of the beds that will not be planted until mid May, so they can get some green manure in them and to keep the dust down. The dust get very bad here at times, and the wind NEVER blows, ask Annie's Granny. The eggplant seed I started on bits of T.P. have sent out their radicle (see last post) so will pot them up later this evening.
5 comments:
I'm glad you are doing the irrigation experiment, before I get mine started! I'm hoping to learn from your mistakes. I'm also counting on you to find a good recipe for our eggplant ;-) I drove by your place this afternoon. I'd have stopped, but Mr. H dragged me out for a hamburger and a ride right in the middle of my giving myself a perm...I had a wet frizzy head, and didn't want to be seen by anyone! We're supposed to get a windstorm and a drop in temps after the beautiful day we had today, I hope no rain 'cause I have to go get a load of compost in the next day or two.
Looks like we had the rain and wind. I think 2 of my cabbage didn't survive the night, the wind tore them up. Had them under milk jugs but they didn't stay in place. I think the problem with the pipes is that there is too much hole for the flow and pressure available. Takes a lot of holes to cover 25ft long beds.
I've been rethinking my original plan, and think I'll use a hose fitting on my PVC to run water from the faucet to cover the west side gardens rather than include it in the automated system. The north and east beds are going to take some planning, the beds are all such different heights.
We got the first half-yard of compost from Mac's today, and spread it all. Went back for another half yard this afternoon, will finish off the beds tomorrow.
Is a half yard a pickup load or less? I figure a Ranger bed can hold 1.3 yards by volume.
We can get a full yard in the Ranger, but it's really pushing it. The dairy compost is quite wet and heavy, and I wanted two different kinds this year, so we got 1/2 yd. dairy and went back for the 1/2 yd. of the more expensive leaf & twig. The L & T is much lighter, we could have carried a full yard of that easily. Dairy was $12 and L&T was $18.50, with tax the entire bill was $33.03. The past two years I've used straight dairy, and nothing added to it. It grows lovely gardens.
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