Putting the pipe together

Eating Well – A Diet Blog:
August 14, 2008 5:44 P.M. Weight: 345.0 lbs.

It’s been a little while since I posted about my garden here – part of the reason is that I have been… in the garden.

Last year, the big disappointment I had was working hard on the couple of beds I had planted, then going away for a week, and coming back to find plants drying out everywhere. Neighbours can be helpful with watering, but you still worry about what you are going to come back to.

So this year, I decided I was going to build some kind of irrigation system, starting off with two water butts, taking water off my garage roof.

I bought a HozeLock “Water Butt Border Watering Kit”, which – in my naivety – I thought would be suitable for watering my borders from a water butt. On the packaging, it showed it all connected to a butt, not more than a foot off the ground, and mine were higher than that, so it must work, no?

No chance. It worked in a fashion when the water butt was filled to the brim, but the soaker hose closest to the butt got all the water, and the beds furthest away got none. On inquiring of HoseLock, they explained how I wouldn’t get a consistent water pressure along a long soaker hose. “So why does your kit contain 15 metres of the stuff?” No answer.

So, this week, I took it all apart, and put it back together again. Whereas before, I had a length of standard hose, then some soaker when it reached the planting bed, then some more standard hose, then some more soaker, this time I laid a black semi-rigid pipe around the perimeter of the garden. Then at each planting points I inserted a T junction, connected to a small inline tap, connected to a short length of soaker hose.

Success – steady constant pressure throughout the system. Still not sure there will enough pressure when the butts are only half full, but provided the hose seeps something, I can just leave it on for longer. Longer term, I intend to put another butt by the house, which will be at the opposite end of the system, so that may improve things. If not, I buy a simple little pump to put in one of the butts.