Oops!

Water problems strike again!

Except this time the problems were strictly human, not nature. So first a recap of how we are set up.

We have been loving this summer’s quiet water new, no drama or worries. We grab a truckload from the bulk facility every couple of days to top off the cistern, and the water levels have remained relatively stable (with the exception of one running toilet, a quickly-resolved situation that is a nuisance in the city, but out here can literally run us dry.)

We have three timed elements managing our automatic irrigation systems. The hanging basket timer is on a faucet under the side porch and includes a liquid fertilizer that is infused in small amounts with each of the 5 minutes x 4 times per day waterings. The plastic water pipe goes up a post by Montana’s hanging plants, all the way to the roof of our wraparound porch, with misting nozzles over each of the hanging baskets. These baskets would probably die if they missed just two days of watering. One year there was some kind of problem and the system stopped, and we didn’t notice until all of the baskets were unrecoverably dead.

The garden has two timers, one for the raised beds, and one for the in-ground beds.

The irrigation for the raised beds is fed off of a hose attached to the first-free spigot by the goat’s water tank. So the spigot is always left in the ON position. The raised beds are all interconnected under the mulch and then up the side of each bed. It runs for 90 minutes every other day plus Sundays.

The third irrigation set-up, for the in-ground beds, is where the trouble was. Like the other, the frost-free spigot on the far side of the garden is always on. It feeds five set of lines, which each have 2-3 drip-lines across the beds. They are also supposed to get 90 minutes on alternating days plus Sundays. But Elijah’s pepper garden was getting too much water, so Steve came up with a clamping solution to stop the water before it got to that end (luckily it was on an end.)

Unfortunately, we didn’t realize it, but when doing that work Steve had turned off the valve that fed that whole side of the in-ground beds. They were getting ZERO water for almost the entire summer! And remember, we are a desert, so there is no rain to rely on.

Miraculously, many of the plants were somehow slowly still trying to grow! The poppies I featured last week are an example. As are all of the plants photographed below. I have enough going on with the total garden that I was really not terribly bothered that several beds had germinated so poorly and/or didn’t thrive. I figured it was because I didn’t properly prepare the soil after my lazy fall last year or I blamed my lazy planting techniques. But I had three sad tomatoes that never came around, and that seemed suspicious, causing me to inquire.

So Steve fixed the valves that needed turning and made a few other miscellaneous repairs, so we are back in business and will see. Sorry plants! Some plants will be fine (probably not those tomatoes though); it’s not too late to save them. Some are goners already. In some of spots I tossed in some more seeds, even though the end of July is a cruel time to ask a seedling to thrive.