Water
Installing Irrigation in the Soft Fruit section of Posh Market Garden
Water is life and it is the key to success as a farmer or in my case being a Market Gardener. As Andy continues to recover from his stroke, I am taking on his responsibilities around the farm. This includes learning how to install irrigation and how to maintain and repair it once it is in place; It is both overwhelming and exciting at the same time. Luckily, I have examples of what he did last year that I can use as a guide. When I must purchase new parts, I also rely on the gentlemen at CPS Distributors (who know me by name now) or our wonderful friends Gary and Meril from Restoration Vineyards. With each section of the Market Garden, we start by hiring people to install the below ground irrigation piping and electrical and then Andy and I finish the above ground irrigation install. This is what I’ve been working on this spring.
Install is an expensive endeavor, and I always forget until I must purchase the next round of materials. Thus far I’ve finished installing the drip lines for the soft fruit section of our garden, our latest addition. Because we hadn’t ordered all the fruit at the time of Andy’s stroke, I’ve had to set the lines up so that they can function now as well as be expanded upon next year. It means I will still need to purchase additional supplies to finish it off but with a year under my belt, the installation next year should go a lot smooth because I will know what I’m doing.
As I prepare the vegetable section of the garden, I am replacing weed barrier and cutting back on the number of rows I plan to plant this year. This means I will also scale back on the drip lines and the length of these lines. Using my newfound knowledge acquired while installing the irrigation for the soft fruit, it should be an easy process. My goal is to reuse the line that I cut, for the raised beds I will be installing over by the potting shed.
The watering in that area will be different, at least for now, in that I will be attaching the lines to a frost freeze spicket that is tied to our Ute water, not the canal water that we use to water the rest of the property. The reason I’m doing this, is because we do not have irrigation lines installed in the potting shed area. This means our water bill will go up slightly, but I plan to regulate the watering using a timer attached to the spicket. Unlike the irrigation in the Market Garden, this watering system will be jury-rigged so that we can get the watering job done until I can get proper irrigation installed by professionals.
When watering the property, I’m always trying to plan both for the present and the future. Recently, I purchased a new Rachio 3 smart system that has 16 zones, thus expanding on our previous system that only had eight zones. Among other things, I did this because we needed to expand our irrigation to include the grassy area around our Airbnb. Originally, I was going to water this area by hand but with me commuting to Denver so often this spring, that plan was no longer realistic. Like our old system, this one uses WIFI and is controlled by our phones. So, no matter where I am be it in Denver with Andy at Craig hospital or at home, I can run our sprinklers and ensure the Garden and property gets water. Because it is a smart system it also means we are using less water and thus allows us to be good stewards of water conservation!
