what irrigation works for you?

Discussion in 'Designing, building, making and powering your life' started by PDB, Mar 13, 2008.

  1. PDB

    PDB Junior Member

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    Just been looking at my irrigation. I would like to hear what other people use. I'm using rain tanks but don't use pumps so would be good to get other ideas.
    Thanks
    Paul
     
  2. IntensiveGardener

    IntensiveGardener Junior Member

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    Hi PDB,
    I'm not sure what your watering or how its setup, so i can't really advise on your situation. What method have you been using until now.

    I use a combination of hand watering and soaka hoses. I'v tryed many methods and i'v found this to be by far the cheapest and most effective.
    I have raised beds about 3 -4 foot wide and 160 feet (~48m) long with plants planted closeer than usual to provide a "living mulch"canopy effect. I generally water smaller plants by hand using a fine sprayer from above to simulate rain. this is very water effecient as none is wasted on the paths. soaka hoses are used when the plants are more advanced and can catch most of the water with their leaves.
    I always water in the late afternoon so the water has time to sink in overnight and does not evaporate as much.
    I'v tryed sprayers on black polypipe and found it impossible to keep the sprayers clean and not clogged even though i used an expensive filter.
    Drippers don't really appeal for the same reason. Also, i want to water the whole bed evenly not just along a dripline.

    IG
     
  3. hardworkinghippy

    hardworkinghippy Junior Member

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    My garden's on a south-facing slope. At the top there's the house and the goat shed and all the water from the roofs goes into containers, which feed into a hose which I use where needed for goats, geese and plants. Everything works by gravity. These are some of my containers :

    [​IMG]

    At the bottom of the garden there's the chicken shed and the butts there are used for the chickens and for the plants.

    [​IMG]

    We've also made a drain from the front of the house which fills up a heavy clay pond for the geese and ducks and the water from the roofs will go directly into another pond which we'll use at a "last resort" if we need it.

    We've been having drought here for the past few years and as some of you know that's not funny when you rely on your own crops.

    We mulch heavily, but water's still needed at all times throughout the growing season.
     
  4. barely run

    barely run Junior Member

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    Impressive setup H W Hippy :razz:
    has anyone used the terracotta pots buired under the soil...they look interesting
    Cathy
     
  5. Freemann

    Freemann New Member

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    hardworkinghippy
    I was looking intensively at you site and photos in the image database.
    I really love your place and hopefully one day I would like to visit you. I am situated in Greece so it can be easily done.
    I was wondering myself the last few days how you water all this plants, it seems you have flowers and food plants everywhere isn't it a big endeavor watering all this plants by hose, specially in the summer time?
    Don't you have a spring in your property aswell?
    Here droughts like in France are becoming more frequent.
    My gut feeling is that water management will become one of the most important issues the next years.
    :)
     
  6. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    PDB, where I live is a natural drought, no rain from the end of spring until winter, but I do have a spring and water tanks. And I have a hillside, and all water is on gravity flow. I use 1/2 inch dripper lines and drippers. Because there isn't a lot of pressure, especially when the tank is low, I can only have a few of the drip lines running at the same time. Sometimes it's better to have a 50-foot line, than a 100 foot (30 meters) line.

    I use drippers that have the highest amount of water possible, i.e., 3 gallons (11 liters) per hour, but run them for only 15 minutes. Buying the small drippers just takes forever to water, and over the course of a season there will be times I won't have all those hours to water, and then things are in trouble.

    I use a lot of compost tea, but it takes too long to walk with buckets and I am getting a sore wrist from it. Compost tea has bits of weird stuff in it that clogs up dripper lines, so I am working on using house gutters with holes drilled in it and just fill the gutter lines once a month, (the ends can be sealed) moving them around from place to place. These store pretty well, too.

    When I was a kid my dad used his tractor (or a tiller) to make furrows around all the trees and gardens, and then pumped from a tank and flooded those furroughs. It takes a lot of water if you only have one starting point, or make several starting points and flood only certain areas at a time. Best to do in the morning when none of it will evaporate. Then using 4-6 inches (152 mm) of mulch keeps that water in the soil and the flooding only has to be done maybe once a month on mature plants in the hottest parts of summer.




    HWHippy, beautiful! It is so lovely to see what hard work can do. Sometimes I get overwhelmed at it all, and I love to just watch other people work!!

    Do you use stinging nettle at all? I have a bit of it planted, but am concerned it's going to take off and make things uncomfortable! :D
     
  7. hardworkinghippy

    hardworkinghippy Junior Member

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    Thanks for your compliments Freeman (and Sweetpea!) but to be honest gardening is easy in South West france the climate is wonderful and that was the reason I moved here. (I'm Scottish.) You're very welcome to visit, we've a farm so we're always here and love having visitors.

    I don't water a lot, only when I plant things out, and as most of our land is on a slope I use either raised beds or tree roots and stones to retain the earth with a thick layer of mulch before I start a bed and then mulch again when things are growing on well.

    I water vegetables in the evening if I think they need it but in 2003 I gave up watering in July when we ran out of rain water. The tap water here is very expensive and full of chlorine I don't like using it. I piled on as much mulch as I could and just left the vegetables to do what they could. We got about half of our normal crop - but the Aubergines were the best I've ever grown.

    We have a stream, but the house is at the top of a hill and the stream's in the valley but we've also a garden there where we grow things for storing and food for the pigs. Our original plan was to use a hydraulic ram to raise the water in the stream, but thank goodness we didn't do that that because over the past two years the stream has been drying up (completely in the summer) and it looks as though we'll have to change our plans.

    I have that same feeling about water being a problem...

    Sweetpea, I haven't used nettles in the garden for some time, although we cook with them. Having chickens free-ranging helps to keep down pests and gives the plants the extra nitrogen they need to stay healthy and the mulches I use are mixed with goat droppings. Our goats graze over a wide area so the nutrition content is very high.
     

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