Drip Irrigation Can Be Fun?

So, when I’m not running around in the dark of night, swapping Obama signs with Hillary signs and KJ signs with Fargo signs,* I’m diligently tending my little organic veggie garden.

Today (yes, Monday morning), I installed a drip irrigation system. Then I sashayed all over midtown with an “I’m conserving more water than you” bumpersticker stuck to my butt. Okay, not really. But seriously, it took me about three hours and was fun–in the sense of logicking-out-a-puzzle fun, not trip-to-remote-Mexican-beach fun.

As you can see…it’s a very simple system, so it’s not like I think I’m a genius…But it’s pretty cool and it was bizarrely enjoyable to lay the whole thing out, figure out how to position the 1/2″ mainline and each of the 10 1/4″ drip lines (hard to see in the photo). In the upper right corner are the tomatoes I finally transplanted. There’s a roma, a brandywine, and a Cherokee red. The 4th tomato cage is for the cherry tomatoes…the first batch of which were devoured by a mouse or bird at the boyfriend’s house.  So a couple of new seedlings are in the works on my kitchen counter.

 The best piece of advice I got on installing the drip irrigation was from my step-mother, who said I should dip the ends of the 1/4″ hose into hot water to soften them before trying to insert the connectors and drippers. This little tip made life so much easier today…and it did not appear anywhere on the Rainbird product info. (What’s up with that?) Aside from that, the whole thing was a piece of cake. I laid out my plan and then went to Ace Hardware to get the supplies. When I got there, they actually had a kit that had nearly everything I needed. I augmented it with a y-splitter attachment for my faucet and some 2gph drip heads, but other than that everything was all in a nice little box for $35. I also bought an automatic timer ($25), which I will install later this week, once I figure out my watering schedule.

Also, in the foreground above, please note the freaking monster eggplant and (in the lower left corner) the cocozelle, which is already so big it’s pushing the deer (well, dog) netting away. When it first sprouted, the cocozelle was being eaten by some sort of pest (never did identify it). The boyfriend recommended a very light dusting of wood ash from the fireplace directly on the leaves. Luckily, I had not yet cleaned out my fireplace, so I had a bit in there to use. It worked wonders…no more late-night pest snacking.

Here’s a different angle:

It’s hard to tell in this shot, but I am also growing a bumper crop of bermuda grass and spurge. Aside from its ugly name, I actually think the spurge is okay. It is a low-growing groundcover/invasive, but I may actually leave a little in the spots between the veggies. I think it’s kind of pretty–as the summer wears on, that rose-colored-glasses sort of thinking may fade, but I’m going with it for now.

The reality is, I do have to dig up bermuda grass and the spurge pretty frequently to keep it under some sort of facade of control and prevent it from taking over the entire garden. Much of this work would have been eliminated if I’d done a raised bed with clean soil, but I didn’t.

Also, I wasn’t paying attention when I planted the cucumbers (rookie move), and I planted them too close together. I got the brilliant idea of digging up the sprouts, gently separating them and replanting them farther apart. That was not my finest moment; I nearly killed them all. However, they survived and are getting bigger, so that my near cuke-icide was averted.

The bellpepper looks healthy and stout, but is growing slowly compared to the cocozelle and eggplant. And, finally, I planted some basil seeds in a pot and put it on my patio rail. In last week’s winds (what was up with the sciroccos?), the pot ended up on the ground. Needless to say, the patient did not survive the fall. I trundled over to Talini’s to buy a 4″ Genovese basil, and I’m going to plant some of my remaining basil seeds to see if I can not kill them again.

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* Just kidding, people. Relax. The teenagers take care of that sort of thing for me. Leaving my valuable Gen-X time for important things like pedicures, scoring iced mochas at Temple, and listening to 2005 Morcheeba CDs.