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Wednesday, September 26, 2012

My Vegetables Are Irrigated

Unfortunately, they're nearly dead.


I do not say that due to my inability to water by hand, which I am incapable of doing in a consistent manner.  No, we have entered our Southern California "Autumn".  I say this because our day time temperatures still hover around 100 F (38C), but our nights are dropping into the 50's F (10's C).  This means my peppers have given up hope (although I have one plant that has a few clinging to life) and the tomatoes have said adios.  Perfect time for me to get the irrigation done.


I plan on sowing a lot of seeds directly into the garden as opposed to starting them indoors and then moving them outside.  As such, it occurred to me that a pure drip system may not work as half, if not more, of the seeds will never get water.  We don't get rain, so just get that thought out of your head right now.  The only water I get is what California steals from Arizona!  Ok, Arizonians, put those weapons down.  They're crazy, you know.

(As a complete aside, my boss at work has a son in college.  This particular college requires them to take a 5 week course studying abroad.  Their choices?  Czech Republic, Italy, Hong Kong and...Arizona.  Yea, they're out there.)

I decided to put some sprayers out instead of drip emitters.  Unfortunately, these aren't cutting it.  Notice the streams above?  Makes a nice set of stripes.  Not what I'm looking for.


I also set a row of 360 sprayers down the middle.  Unfortunately, again, not what I had in mind.  They spray fine....about 3 inches.  You unscrew the top to get more spray.  At inch 4 the top popped off and I got a face full of water.  A very Three Stooges moment.

So, I'm going online to dripirrigation.com to find something that might work better.  I've always had good luck with them.  I'm not linking, as they don't pay me.  And, I'm lazy.

I also ran into a problem from my last post.  You may remember that I linked into the wrong side of the zone I'm tying this irrigation into.  Now that I've linked into the correct side, I've realized that I didn't bother capping any of the sprinkler heads I'm no longer using.  Think Caddyshack.  Yea, it was that bad.


2 comments:

  1. Surely a man of your ingenuity can find a better solution than just buying a bunch of spray heads. I mean, what the fuck are those children you pay for doing? I'm sure they can carry a watering can, can't they?

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  2. I will think of you working out this watering system the next time I carry my watering can.

    Hope you figure it all out.

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