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Inspired by my brother’s work in Africa on an irrigation project I decided that the best thing for us to do was try to set up some sort of drip irrigation system. Not only does a system like this have efficiency advantages but it also is something that could be set on a timer … a big advantage for Nina and I because 1) our schedules tend to be all over the place and 2) we are notorious at forgetting to do things like water plants. This is better for all parties, us and the plants.
I know very little about drip irrigation so it’s a work in progress. Fun to design and change and pretty remarkable how it works. Here’s a shot of the first cut of irrigation.
The hoses are soaker hoses so they “weep” water out slowly. Once I have some actual plants that are of reasonable size I think I’ll swap these out for more focused drip lines. But I need some growth first. The system is set to come on every couple of days very early in the morning and seems to be working well though it’s a bit unnerving that all of the soil isn’t totally wet when it’s done. From what I understand the water propagates through the soil under the surface and it does seem to be doing this when I dig down into the ground with my hand.
So, I’ll add one more photo … there is some great life showing. It’s very exciting and remarkable to me that things are coming up. This shot is from about 5 days ago. This weekend I’m going to take some more (Nina took this one) with some closeups of specific plants. I can’t believe how quickly some things grow … every morning there are new plants popping out.
To the left of the sign is the lettuce sprouting up (Salad Bowl variety of seed) and a nice shot of the soaker line. At the back there’s some spinach (Tyee) which was one of the first things to pop up. I’ll show a funny photo about the spinach’s behaviour when it comes to the sun in a later post. Pretty neat to see.
Things that are now on my mind are:
1) planting some empty spaces as it’s been about 3 weeks since my first planting
2) figuring out how and when to add fertilizer
3) trying to understand the process of thinning plants as I have fairly dense growth in the rows which I think is ok for some things (like cut and come again lettuce) but less ok for other things (broccoli and daikon).
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