Our big gardens are finally planted. Now we water, weed, fertilized and eat. Greenhouses have been planted for a few days, but Wife completed the garden today. She also helped me repair the roof of one of our sheds that used to hold hay for our livestock and is now used to store a myriad of things. Tomorrow I repair the water system and complete the irrigation stuff that has to be fixed and expanded a bit. A few things are grown either for the grandchildren (large pumpkins) or for wife's garden display at the fair. She is now a produce judge, so she will have to recuse herself from judging some of the displays she does.
What kind of water system do you have,Don? Out my way folks don't stress their wells to water their gardens, they use rain capture systems...or they just let Mother Nature help (or not.) When I put in the garden I've since abandoned, I looked at a drip irrigation system, but think the hard water would probably make short work of those tiny holes and the hoses that "weep."
We use drip systems on some of our crops, and we do use the well during wet times. During dry periods, we have a large pump that we use to pump form the lake behind our house. That pump will service up to 4 sprinkler systems, or countless drip systems if they don't get clogged. The pump doubles as a fire suppression system in times of trouble.
Best thing if using our well is to water at twilight/evening. It holds through the next day. We have been bordering on a draught the last few weeks. It is supposed to rain tonight. My neighbor cut our hay yesterday and I think it is so dry he can put it up before the rain tonite.
Our well is difficult to "stress". When we bought this property almost 30 years ago, the DEC guy came out and opened the outside hose tap and ran a hose from that to the septic tanl pump out. He left it running full blast for 24 hours, and neither the well notr the tank and drain field had any problems, so it passed. We do use the big pump if it it dry enough that many garden areas need to be watered at once.
It's been real dry here, too. We were forecast for 7 straight days of rain, and it seems to fall apart where we get a few hours...which is certainly welcome.
Can only get so many in here for since reason. Poato plant....anyone know how much to water potato plant?
when i was young we grew potatoes ...then dug a huge pit lined with sacks ...or something that held out water... a burm was around the top and wooden platform on top... being sent to the tater pit in mid winter was an experience... anyway...that wasn't your question....I don't know about water... your plantings are going to be scrumptious
I thought he might be stuck in planting season, but an earlier post by him said he was all done with it, and was in maintenance mode.
I was away for two weeks in Indianapolis to meet our new grandson (number 15 grandchild), but we are back now. I will try to post photos of some of the harvest we came back to, even though we had family picking while we were gone. We grew a new variety of cucumber this year that is a primitive ancestor of some modern cucs and grows over 18" long and tastes better than any cucumber we have ever grown.