Watering the Garden

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I have mentioned a little bit on how we water our garden and thought I would share some pics of the process and show you how my garden is growing.  I had a few people comment on doing a “square foot garden” and one reason I don’t do that method is due to how I water.   


We have 2 ponds.  One is a small spring pond that feeds our big pond.  The spring pond is what I use to water my garden.  There is a pipe that runs underground from the spring to the garden.  I can access the water from a faucet in the garden. The elevation from this pond to the garden is not much.  I am not able to run sprinklers.  I also can’t use soaker hoses because the spring pond has debris in it that plugs up the soaker hoses.   You can see a pic here of the 2 ponds (the spring pond being the small one in front of the big pond) and you can see my garden to right.  You can also see the little dam in the pic.  The water needed to rise above the level of the pipe that carries the water from this pond to the garden….


 


After lots of trial and error we came up with a plan (several years back now) to use PVC pipe and a ditch type of watering system.  The pipe runs from the faucet across the top of the rows….


 


The pipe has been cut to lengths that can be removed at the same intervals as the width between my garden rows.  Basically we start at one end and turn on the water and let run down the little ditch we make to the end of the row….




Then we remove a section of the pipe and it waters the next row.  We continue the process until all the rows have been watered.  
 



 


Now it takes just one person only 10 or 15 minutes to water the garden.. a big improvement in time!  It was taking one person one hour to water the garden by buckets.. which is what we were doing before Tobin fixed the dam in the spring pond. 


The down side to this system is mole holes.. If they dig under a spot where my ditch is the water goes down the mole hole instead of down the garden row. 


The boys are checking the water flow to make sure it is getting to the end of the row and not down a mole hole.



My castor oil mix does work, somewhat.. but I found my pesky mole(s) was digging tunnels in different places. So now I have resorted to the gum method.. I’ll keep you posted.  A couple people commented on cats taking care of their problem.  I do have cats but unfortunately have way more moles on my property than they can keep up with.    


 


 


 


 

Comments

  1. justmestracyJuly 11, 2009 at 3:35 AM

    Hi Crystal, about your mole problem... They do not like humans so an old neighbor of mine was a hair dresser and told me to use the cuttings of human hair, stuff it in every hole you see... the mole will go away! It worked for me the sad thing was my moles left for her house, but at lease she could get lots of hair for the holes.... Most hair places just sweep up the hair and throw it away, if you ask I'm sure they wouldn't mind sharing. Have a blessed week-end

    ReplyDelete
  2. HweaklandJuly 12, 2009 at 5:51 AM

    Our garden in about 10 steps away from the house but about 3 acres away from our now dried up pond so unfortuantly I can not do this as it sounds like the perfect solution to lowering our water bill and I hate using "city water" with all it's chemicals to my vegetables. So for now I guess we are going to have to make due with the ol' sprinkler and the garden hose I always forget to turn off (it has a timer but even so it still leaks and I forget to turn off the faucet).

    Here's to praying the moles find somewhere else to call home!

    Blessings,

    Hope

    ReplyDelete
  3. CrystalGJuly 12, 2009 at 1:24 PM

    Your garden is beautiful. How do you keep all the weeds out. I struggle with that one.

    ReplyDelete
  4. triciaJuly 13, 2009 at 2:41 PM

    Homemade ice cream. What a great present!!

    ReplyDelete

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