A late start to the sprinklers this year
Some years, we bring out
the hoses and hook up the sprinklers in April; this year it's nearly
June. That said, my sun dances seem to have been working ---
highs up to 90 and a week without rain has started cracking the earth
as it shrinks and dries. Garden growth is slowing down too ---
thus hauling out the sprinklers.
You can read all about the
reason we designed our irrigation system the way we did here. The initial setup
cost a couple of hundred bucks, but the sprinklers and hoses have been
going strong for four years now without an end in sight. I did
take a minute to grease each sprinkler before getting started this
spring, which should prevent the trouble I had with a couple of
sprinklers getting stuck in one spot previously. That small
bit of maintenance aside, irrigation of the vegetable garden is now
nearly trouble-free --- just flip a switch and change a valve every few
hours.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Where do you get your water for the sprinklers? Well or pond? Do you use an electric pump with an expansion tank?
Have you considered using drip irrigation on any parts of the homestead?