As I continue to grow the garden in its improvements with things like raised beds and hydroponics as well as the micro irrigation hardware that I've adopted to take care of the watering, I've had to try and stay neck and neck between the addition of more growing space and the expansion of the micro irrigation. I did manage to add extra plumbing going to the Dog Kennel Greenhouse to keep up with the addition of the bucket and drum raised beds, but as I continued to add raised beds, and drum beds, I will have to start adding more plumbing, even outside of the normal growing areas.
I have some drum planters with fruit trees and strawberries that are on the opposite end of the garden that will need irrigation just as well as the raised beds in the greenhouse or at the back of the garden where the highest concentration of raised beds sit. In order to reach these drum planters I'll have to run a lot of PVC pipe along the fence line, some of which has no wood fence established, to reach the area. That will be for another day, but in the meantime there is the matter of getting the beds in the greenhouse and one of the external units, hooked up for watering as they currently have plants growing.
These okra plants are struggling in the heat and will need a good steady flow of water so they can continue to flourish in the hot summer sun. Note the rubber hose routed up through the chain link fencing that makes up the walls of the greenhouse, to connect to one of the 4 way junctions for the main conduits.
Since I already had plumbing routed to the greenhouse, it was just the matter of installing the sprayers and the rubber tubing that would connect them to the main plumbing conduits. This was rather easy, as the micro irrigation hardware allows for. I used the lower flow stake sprayers that spray a few little streams of water for the bucket beds while using a single high flow sprayer for the one drum bed that currently contains cucumbers. With the plumbing all set up, all the active beds in the greenhouse are set and ready to go as far as getting the timed watering that the rest of the beds have experienced in the last year. I still have one more drum bed in the greenhouse that I have to plant, but when I do, I will be able to connect to one of the fittings on the 4 way junction to feed a single high flow sprayer to that bed as well. Going outside the greenhouse there was the matter of getting water to one of the double drum raised beds. This single table was made with two drum halves serving as planters, currently containing four spaghetti squash plants that are vining out, but are struggling in the heat. In order to get water to this bed, and a future double bed that I plan to build and set up next to this one, I will have to connect to the one line that is feeding a row of drum beds. I'll have to dig up the pipe to cut and splice new fittings to this line and get another spur over to the next row of raised beds, also adding another 4 way fitting to feed the hoses going to the sprayers. Since I don't have any of the fittings to do this, I had to do a temporary setup, where I spliced a tee into the last sprayer on the first row of beds, then strung a length of hose across to the squash bed to feed the sprayers installed within. Kind of crude, but effective enough to ensure this bed gets watered just as well. I also have a row of drum planters that are used for different fruit trees as well as a muscadine plant that is supported on a PVC trellis. Of these multiple planters, three of the drums are not supported on the irrigation system that currently feeds the older drums. I can expand the setup but will still need a simple fitting to allow me to replace the threaded plug with a coupling to add more 1/2" flex tube with which I can tap into in order to run the extra sprinklers for these final three drum planters. Once I get that simple fitting, I can get this whole row of tree planters set up. At this point most of the planters that I was concerned with are hooked up for automatic watering. All I have to worry about watering by hand are six drum planters for fruit trees. Once I get the fitting that number drops to three. As I do manage to get more fencing put up to enclose the garden, I can add to the plumbing to reach around to these farther drum planters, as well as the newer drum raised beds I've been setting up along the eastern fence line. As I expand the water system, I'll need to expand the raised beds to keep up, further completing the garden. And then there's the hydroponics systems.
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