drip irrigation is pretty awesome
This is our drip irrigation system that we bought last year (kit form), just laid out a week ago when we transplanted the heirloom tomatos. This year the plants are 24″ apart and the rows are 36″ apart. We would like more spacing between rows but the fenced garden is not big enough for the number of plants going in.
There is a mechanical timer associated with this vegbed and typically we come out in the morning or evening and turn it on for 1 or 2 hours.
All of the supplies came from irrigationdirect.ca
Other components are a vaccuum breakers, a filter, and a pressure reducer. The system worked very well last year and so far so good this year. You can tell by the narrow strips of wet earth that it is much more efficient in getting water to plants than a sprinkler and much more conventient than hand watering with a hose and nozzle.
Lastly yet another signage system. In past years we would staple these laminated laser printed names onto a 2×2 stake, which also supported the tomatos. This year we are not putting in the 2×2 stakes right away, rather later on when the plants are well established and much larger. So instead we tried this… gluing the names on popsicle sticks for now, and transferring them to the 2×2 later on… still haven’t quite worked out how that will work, but at least the letters are running left to right instead of sideways uptodown as in the past 🙂
