If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. Anne Bradstreet

And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them. Ether 12:27

Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season therof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart; Yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul. And it pleaseth God that he hath given all these things unto man; for unto this end were they made to be used, with judgment, not to excess, neither by extortion. D&C 59:18-20

Sunday, November 10, 2019

Drip Irrigation system layout

Over the years of patio/balcony gardening, I've tried to setup wicking buckets, but have not had success doing that.  This last summer, I used plastic bottles and gallon jugs with wicks dripping into the containers, but that didn't work very well at all.  I finally settled on using 2-liter pop bottles with pin holes in the bottom to slowly water the containers.  That worked best, but of course required that I fell the bottles every day.  And sometimes I had to adjust the placement of the bottles so they would do the irrigation intended.  I had laid down some white paper towels and found it useful because the irrigation water would soak the towels and thus spread the watering out on a broader scale.

Next spring I want to have a better irrigation system in place, one that will not require daily filling of bottles.  I do not have an outside water source, and although I do have a garden hose, I can't leave it always attached to my kitchen faucet, and it is a pain to hook it up and drag it through my living room.

Below is the drip irrigation system that I want to install.  I've looked into getting much larger water barrels, but they are very expensive.

Since I already have the totes that I'm going to use, I'm going to setup this system in Feb or March and test it out to see if it will irrigate all of the totes. I'm putting the water tower in the SW corner of my patio to protect it against the wind and being knocked over.  If I have to, I'll setup another water tower on the NW corner. It depends too on how long my 10-gallon tower will water the totes without having to be refilled.

The diagram is not to scale.  I will have room on the NE corner, next to the 30 gallon tote, to put a 5-gallon bucket as another planter.  If I do, I will put herbs and flowers in it.  I will also put flowers to attract the bees in all of the totes along with the main plants.

This last year, I did a lot of pruning of my tomato plants to encourage more fruit.  This next year I will have them supported much better and will let them get bushy and heavy.  That may curtail some of the height, too, as they both got ridiculously tall, especially the cherry tomato plant.
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