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Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Watering the Vegetables

Most of the day was spent on other peoples farms checking and moving cattle, harrowing, moving irrigators and fencing.

The westerly winds this week have dried out lots of beds and pots and another pump up from the dam was needed. Started both pumps to ensure the holding tank at the house was filled and then gave all the beds a good soaking and most of the pots were hand watered a job to be finished in the morning.

When the watering system was first installed the pipe was put in about 400 mm above the soil to reduce overspray. This was fine except when the crop was taller than the height of the pipe. At that point the spray couldn't reach all parts of the bed and dry pockets would appear. Eventually the inertia to fix the problem was overcome and the pipe raised to above the protective netting. A job which turned out to be surprisingly easy and quick. Isn't that always the way. The end result is a much more thorough watering system and the overspray doesn't seem to have any additional negative affect.

Overhead spray system

Sometimes it makes you wonder why we put up with the poorer solution for so long.

The other change that was made at the time was to hard wire all the beds to their own tap at a central point rather than drag and couple a hose each time watering was needed. Again a relatively simple job which made watering significantly easier.

A tap for each bed

Using the same riser to store the hose as well

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