Pete and I are pretty new at this garden thing. That’s not to say we haven’t jumped into the project with manic enthusiasm, but there have been some bleedingly obvious things we’ve missed.
When we first set up the garden, the weather was semi-tropical – hot with lots of rain, and everything grew like crazy. Granted we had problems with powdery mildew, and the tomatoes were waterlogged, not to mention the whole garden flooding…but on the whole, we had abundant, reassuring growth.
Then, out of the blue, a heatwave hit, and everything in the garden just frizzled.
And…don’t laugh…we really didn’t know what had happened! We had long discussions about the ph levels of the soil, and whether our plants were suffering from a viral wilt, or nematodes. Then it dawned on us – we just hadn’t been watering them enough. We felt like idiots, but understand that we had barely had to water the garden at all up until then, and it had been going gangbusters!
Pete now believes that because our soil was in pretty poor condition to begin with, everything just died as the soil dried up. It wasn’t very well conditioned yet or rich in organic material, so it simply wasn’t able to cope with the extreme temperature change.
Water itself wasn’t a problem – we had installed two 2000 litre water tanks earlier in the year, so we had a reasonable supply. The tricky part was delivering it – a permanent irrigation system in the garden wasn’t possible because the chickens were rotating every few months, and they would dig out anything left in a bed prior to their arrival.
My clever husband and his equally clever brother Uncle Steve solved the problem in a most ingenious way.
Pete designed, and Uncle Steve installed, a modular system consisting of the following:
1. a permanent irrigation loop under the path, circling past all the beds,
2. a snap lock connector attached to the side of each bed, joined into the loop via a T-connector, and
3. a separate unit, consisting of a piece of pipe joined to a circle of soaker hose, hooked up to the snap lock connector at the side of each bed. The soaker hose – also known as a leaky hose – is an irrigation product designed to deliver a very slow constant watering to a given area.
All the beds are hooked up in a connected loop back to the tanks, and all receive a good solid soaking once or twice a week.
When the chooks are rotated onto a given bed, the circle of hose is removed, and the connector for that bed is capped off with a bespoke plug, bypassing it for the period that the chickens are in residence. Isn’t that clever?
To further improve water retention, we’ve invested in lucerne hay to use as mulch. It’s expensive and will break down quickly, which means we’ll have to replace it regularly. However, as it breaks down it will improve the quality of the soil, and we think it’s worth doing that in the short term to try and bring our soil quality up to scratch.
After just a couple of good soakings, the garden has bounced back with a vengeance!
The sorrel, which had completely yellowed, is now green and lush again…
A portion of each bed is given over to growing chook food, and the lucerne planted here has taken off…
Our poor eggplants, after doing so well all year, suffered badly from the lack of water. Yet after just a few deep waterings, they’ve started flowering again! You can see the curled brown leaves, and the new growth starting to come through…
And this particular plant had tiny fruit which just didn’t develop for weeks – with water, they’re now all growing again…
The basil has recovered well and is now refusing to die! Despite flowering, several of the plants are still producing large aromatic leaves…
The carrots which we forgot to harvest (I told you we were new at this!) are now a decent size…
I thought all the perennial leeks had died off, so I was chuffed today to find both a large one in amongst the purslane, and a cluster of self-seeded ones growing in the newly irrigated beds…
Finally, another lesson learnt – like most novice gardeners, when we first started, we bought seedlings. We knew it was always going to be cheaper to grow from seed, but at the beginning, it was hard to believe that the price difference was actually going to be significant.
These strawberries are a great example. When we first planted them, we bought strawberry seedlings at an exorbitant price – some of the slightly larger ones were $4 each. To make things worse, none of them have done particularly well in the garden.
We’re trying again, but this time with a box of homegrown seedlings, costing just a few cents each. Even if they don’t grow well again, at least we’re only out of pocket the price of a packet of seeds!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
What a brilliant design! Maybe that’s what my garden needs… A really good watering. I sort of installed an irrigation system. But a friend chopped off the end part of the hose while helping me turn the soil. He thought that it was a giant Silverbeet root gone mad and forked and spaded it.Irrigation hasn’t been the same since then but seeing your post reminds me that I should go off to get a better clamp than the makeshift one I have
That’s the nice thing about this Soy – Linda’s chook dome system of gardening doesn’t need any forking over, and Pete’s watering system would remove any attachments prior to the bed being worked anyway! :)
PS. I was at Harkola today with Pete, and I kept trying to guess what you’d bought! :)
Just the thought of having a garden….I live in an apartment in New York City and the only thing I grow is dust bunnies…
Norma, I wish you had a garden too, but it’s good to know you still have access to wonderful fruit and veg – that recent post of yours about the local markets had an outstanding array of produce!
The irony is… we have just ripped out the irrigation system that we had in our garden. It was very similar to yours, but it ran through herbaceous borders and round the original young plants now enormous and wanting to expand. It went here there and everywhere. After six years of growth we found that a) the plants had been quite lazy and instead of going down for water just hung around where it was delivered, grew round the hoses and so on b) we kept stabbing the soaker tubes with our forks and spades through it, they’re fairly easy to mend, but even so and c) it took up space, huge amounts of space, reminding me of the motorways cutting through the countryside. Our soil is slowly getting better, lots of organic matter, a bit of chip bark to suppress the ground elder which wants to come in from next door, precious leaf mould that we have made over the years, but it’s a long process building soil and like you we are still very much beginners at this. Your system is much cleverer than ours ever was as you have taken into consideration that you will have to move it from time to time! We have left connectors at key points so we could hook it up again if we ever needed, as it runs under patios and steps in places. Please come and sort my garden out Celia, anytime !
Not me, Jo, this is all Pete’s design. His plan is to water deeply once a week when needed – he still doesn’t like to water much. Before we grew veg, we would never water at all, and anything that survived had very deep roots! But it doesn’t seem to work with our current design and poor soil, so we need to try and build it up. I think sadly we have fusarium wilt in our beds, and the tomatoes (and also the cucurbits) are all wilting off and dying. Eggplant and chillis seem fine though. So not sure what to do now except to not plant tomatoes for a while..sigh..
It’s all looking great. You are all very clever and inventive – and learning quickly.
Thanks Deb! As I said, I have a very clever husband! :)
Just bought Stephanie Alexanders Kitchen Garden Companion, check bookstores, going half price. Anyway point of that is I am trying to gain some knowledge about what style of veg garden I will sow in Tasmania, hers is a no dig garden, so I am also thirsty for your water tips. Whilst down there our friends in Bicheno asked if we could get some of the white styrofoam boxes for them and so we gathered a dozen for them from our friendly IGA in St Helens – former broccoli boxes and now he has a huge row of them filled with plants, even one just like your strawberries.
Roz, lots of people grow whole gardens in polystyrene boxes, it’s amazing!
Hi celia, strawberries propagate naturally from cuttings, just cut off and plant the dangling bits which hang off them, these even have tiny roots all ready to go. Use rooting powder to speed things up. For less watering get Ultrasoil, reduces watering by 60-90% http://www.benigntech.com
Frances, we tried doing that too, thank you, but Pete wanted to try a different variety of strawberry, hence the seedlings. I’ll check out the ultrasoil, thank you!
An irrigation system’s a good idea. We water mostly by hand with a watering wand on the end of the hose, but it takes up to an hour to water everything!
Manuela, our problem is time – we only spend about half an hour every other day on the garden (more on the weekends), so spending hours watering is difficult. The watering system is working well so far! :)
Great idea with those watering loops! I love watering, it’s nice and therapeutic… but not for hours every day!
I have been trying to get a soaker hose style arrangement for my patch that’s a bit like yours, but have attatched it to a timer so I don’t forget to turn it off.
We have automated systems set up around the rest of the yard and our bigges issue is the dog chewing up the little dripper points and connectors, he never touches the actual hose, just the rest. We have to go with the plain black ones, not any of the couloured ones or there gone in hours!
The chookie manure will build up your soil integrity in no time, I think your garden looks beautiful!
Becca, thanks for the encouragement – the lovely ladies do wonders in the garden, but because we’re steadfastly refusing to use anything that ends in “cide” (insecticide, pesticide, herbicide, fungicide etc), it’s been a struggle to keep pests and diseases in check. We keep going and learning on the way though..
Gardening really brings it home how precious and vital water is to life! I have a permanent irrigation loop with a snap lock connector for each bed too, but because my beds are all fortress fenced I can run it around the top, up high out of the way of forks and shovels and weeding. That has worked well. I have a short length of hose attached to each that stays there, making it easy to water without having to drag a hose around. But I’ve shied away from automatic watering systems, largely because even though I live in lush northern NSW, I have always had to be really frugal with water.
I have a sprinkler on a metre high standpipe (to get it up high enough to avoid being blocked by nearby leaves) that I rotate round the beds, giving them an hour or so soaking, but I only start watering if it has been really dry for an extended time. Otherwise, I just hand water seedlings in the shadehouse and when they are first planted out.
I swear by heavy mulch cover though. In summer I aim to have at least 10 to 15 cm mulch cover over each bed. I mow mine, from a community reserve with angophera trees that drop leaves. So it is longish dry grass mixed with leaf litter rather than lawn clippings. My mower is the one indispensible garden tool that I don’t know how I would survive without though, and I believe locating a source of readily available bulk organic matter is the most fruitful garden job you can do.
Linda, thank you for the great advice, we are trying to follow your instructions and not water too much, and getting more consistent with the mulching. Everything looks lovely (except for the wilting tomatoes, but I think we’ll just give up for this year), but I’m looking forward to the gradual improvement in the soil so we can actually get bigger harvests.
I love your garden posts.
I love gardens, and vegetable produce and well, anything green. It is ALMOST Spring here. ALMOST means not for a couple of months can I plant anything out, but the snow is more of an thing than a daily one. :)
I’m glad you discovered the water problem in time to save your plants. They look quite lush to me- especially the basil.
Heidi, thank you, the basil has just been sooo wonderful this year! I’m grateful for it, especially when everything else was dying off. I’m not sure how long it has to go though – the weather has suddenly turned cold on us…
Quick! Pick the basil and make it into pesto, then chuck it in your freezer in packets. In the middle of winter it’s like a summer holiday on a plate. I’m so envious of your garden, of course it helps to have at least 2 people working on it (and helpful uncles too). My tomatoes (from seed) are finally doing something (about time, with this cold starting). The bought seedlings were hopeless.
Vix, we’ve had a really bad run with tomatoes. They started out ok, but then got fusarium wilt, and all of the new seedlings are dying off. A couple of the ones that self-seeded are still ok, so we’re waiting to see what happens with them.
My goodness – lots of brainstorming has turned into a wonderful system. Well done. You’re plants sure look happier. And was that eggplant? We haven’t suceeded with it yet. Our soil is very good. Most of it has formed from a basaltic dome just up the hill. The recent heavy rains have stripped many of the nutrients and the grass is looking quite a yellowy green at the moment. Lack of nitrogen I think. Anyhow, it’s wonderful that you are addressing your garden’s needs with such good results.
Mariana, thank you, although we are flying by the seat of our pants a bit. Hmm…try this, oops, doesn’t work, try something else.. ;-)
You make me want to garden so much Celia, love your journey & quite ridiculously feel very connected to this gardening journey your on. The watering system looks amazing, well done guys :)
Anna, thanks to you (and everyone else who reads our blog) for sharing the journey – we’re finding it very interesting, that’s for sure!
Very clever! I have often pondered over the complexities of delivering water to circular beds and your solution is looking smart. Question – why lucerne? Personally, I can’t go past pea straw for mulching, it seems to last for ages, goes a long way and doesn’t blow away in the wind.
Your pocket will indeed thank you when you add up how much you ‘could’ve’ spent on seedlings, versus the seeds you are raising at home. Such a difference in the long term! And will you just look at those perennial leeks! What hardy little things they are!
Back to mulch, my friend gave me a couple of sheep fleeces recently to play with and after trimming the clean and nice parts off, there was plenty leftover for throwing on the garden..which someone had told me is great for water retention – something which I’m looking forward to observing in action. The chooks wouldn’t go near it at first though – I suspect they thought a predator was lurking, waiting to attack! They have since overcome this frustrating reflex. Happy gardening, Celia and Pete! :)
Chris, we’re look into pea mulch, thank you! I’d not heard about it before you mentioned it – it’s not widely available here. All we seem to be able to get in bulk is sugarcane mulch.
Those perennial leeks surprised me – I thought I’d killed them all, but there they were, happy and growing! Thanks again for putting us onto them! :)
Hmm, we usually get ours from the local produce store, although I have also bought it from Petstock on occassion. Not sure if you have any petstocks close by or even if they would stock pea straw in inner city? Good luck! :)
I’m passing this on to the wonderhub. He’s working on putting together a garden at his school. :-)
Maz
Quite possibly the best thing that you can do with water.
Maz and Cosmo, thank you! :)
Very fancy. I just use a hose!
Wow! That’s fantastic Celia! The eggplants look glorious! Your husband and BIL did so well with the homemade irrigation systems. I’m so impressed. I’m currently living in a 2bedroom flat in Sydney and do not have the capacity to grow my own vegetables. But my balcony is the size of a master bedroom. This spring I’ll be planting herbs galore!
Wow they did a fantastic job with the system. Don’t be too embarrassed I’m sure I’ve done much sillier things!
Lee, really? Your garden always looks amazing…
Tiny Tea Room, thanks for stopping by! :) Your balcony sounds like a lovely space..
Claire, thanks, the guys really did do an amazing job! :)
Fantastic! I love the irrigation job, also all your chook fodder looks fantastic! I used to chew on sorrel when I was young and wandering home from school. You’ve got me thinking about planting it again…for my kids and my chooks :) Your eggplants are looking great!
Mrs Bok, thank you! I like growing chook fodder actually – it’s nice to always have greens for them. We don’t always have enough kitchen scraps to keep them going.
What ingenious people you all are. Not only a great idea but practical implementation too. You’ve done amazingly well with your garden produce, especially if you have poor soil – long may your garden flourish and your soil improve.
Choc, aren’t they clever? The one thing my Pete can do better than anyone I know is solve a problem. He’s the most ingenious man I know. Now I’m gushing like an infatuated 16 year old, but hey… ;-)
It’s amazing what water can do. I am always scared of over watering, but I think it’s better to overwater than to not put enough water in.