Watering System

So, it's in the middle of winter, 12° (-11 C°) outside, with several inches of snow and more on the way. All this adds up to me thinking about the garden again. I was going through my pictures and found a few that I took this summer of the watering system. So I'm going to show you what we use to water our little front yard garden.

You can see the markings for where to drill
the holes as well as a few tiney holes

To start off, I had to put in an automatic watering system. I just know that I don't have time each day to stand there and water everything by hand, plus when I run a sprinkler system I usually forget it and leave it on way too long. So a timing system was high on my priority list. So, we rented a trencher and buried the pipe.  

 

The drilled sprinkler pipe threaded into the regular

PVC riser laying on top of a small block "riser"

I decided to use the system designed and perfected by Jacob Mittleider. This system uses the thin walled (cheaper and less clogging) 3/4 inch PVC pipe with holes drilled in it. The holes are made with a #57 drill bit -think Heinz 57. There are three holes drilled every four inches down the pipe. The first hole is straight down and the other two are 45° on either side so that you end up with 90° of spray. The pipe is raised off the ground using 6” long pieces of 2x4 lumber. A couple of finish nails sticking up on either side of the pipe keeps it from sliding off the wood. These risers are spaced about every 4 to 5 feet down the grow bed. This will give you about 12 -16 inches of spray, so should only be used in narrow 18” wide grow beds/boxes.



Rain sensor mounted on the pergola


The Central Utah Water Conservancy District has a program where you can receive a rebate for certain parts of an energy efficient watering system. Luckily the nice lady on the other end of the phone was familiar with the Mittleider watering system and was willing to qualify it for the rebate. This meant that I had to install a rain sensor (she later told me that I should have bought a different kind, but she let it slide). It ended up only raining once or twice after I put the sensor in anyway, but I’m sure it will be useful this year. After the rebate the whole system cost me about $225. Not too shabby for how extensive it is.

 

12 valves before I put in the gravel underneath
and the boxes above



At my friend’s house we put this system in and found that we could only put about 20 feet of pipe in each zone. After that the pressure died off and the end of the row wouldn’t get enough water. At my house, that ended up being overkill. I ended up putting in 12 zones, but could have probably gotten away with only putting in 8 or so.



Control boxes with the receiver for the rain sensor

I have the timer set up to water every day, but I only run it for one minute each zone (three minutes in the hottest part of the summer). I have found that this gives the plants all the water they need. But the best thing by far about the automated watering system is that I don’t have to do anything in my garden but prune, weed, fertilize, and harvest. I can even go on vacation and not worry about it. Now that’s the kind of garden I like!



Garden Update

People have asked me to add more pictures to the blog and people keep asking about the garden, so I decided to do a follow up post about how our plants did this year with mostly pictures of vertical gardening.

 Here are the beans in front of the front window.  They cast a nice shade on the front of the house.  This system made them very easy to pick.

The beans grew all the way to the top of the strings and started looking for a place to keep growing

The pumpkins completely took over the pergola providing shade for the house and the hammock.  Check out how the pumpkins just hang there.  They didn't have any problems growing like that.  We didn't even have to support them.

 Another hanging pumpkin.  A couple of our pumpkins ripened really early.







The pumpkin seeds came from a pumpkin we had last year.  We planted 11 plants and grew 11 pumpkins.  Next year we will probably buy seeds to see if we can get more out of each plant.








Pumpkins on the roof.  Look at all that shade.  The vines didn't like growing on the black asphalt shingles.  They kept turning back towards the pergola and hanging down in the middle of the walkway.  I had to keep putting them back up on the pergola.

Here you can see the beans in front of the window, the pumpkin covered pergola with zucchini in the front as well as the salvaged countertop pavers.  The beans are sparse in the middle because a large rain storm came just after we planted washing away the seeds so many of the beans didn't germinate.








A view of the front yard from the street.  The tomatoes ended up growing well over the top of the t-frames.  We canned enough spaghetti sauce and ketchup for the entire year.

Reclaimed Countertop Scraps

Again, it’s been a while since posting last, but here I am again. As you will see in the next few posts I have been very busy. In the Mitleider method of gardening it is important to minimize the amount of non vegitable life in the garden. This is mainly talking about bugs and weeds. The way to accomplish this is by weeding and pruning regularly and by not watering in-between the isles of crops. Because my garden is in the front yard where it is constantly under the scrutiny of anyone passing by, I decided that I didn’t want to have just plain dirt between my grow boxes. So, this is what I came up with:

I went around to several stone countertop manufacturers and picked the scraps out of their dumpsters. I did ask all of them of course (some not at first.) I used the scraps as pavers in-between the grow boxes. Because I am a glass fanatic, I put a mixture of different colored crushed recycled glass between the pieces. What you have as an end result is a beautiful, bug and weed resilient yard.

This process takes many, many, many hours. Each piece is a different thickness and has to be set and leveled individually. I didn’t cut any of them and just trusted that I would find one that fit. It was worse than a huge puzzle.

My Vertical Growing

Here are a few more pictures of the plants I am growing vertically...

The now mostly empty broccoli bed, the cabbage bed, the zucchini/crookneck bed, the tomato bed and then the pumpkin/watermelon bed.  The pumpkins are growing on up the pergola.  We have been able to fit a lot of food into a small space.

The pumpkins have outgrown the T-frame and are heading up onto the pergola.

A tomato plant trained to wrap around the string clockwise.

Same thing with watermelon.  The empty string is waiting for an acorn squash that had a slow start.

I put anchors in the face of the house to run a small cable.  I put a cable both along the top and the bottom and tied strings between them for the beans to climb up.

Beans guide themselves up

The beans don't need to be trained, they just climb on their own

The strings for the tomatoes.  Tomatoes are planted 9 inches apart then are split every other one up either side of the T-frame.  That way the plants get the space they need as they get bigger (as long as you prune them correctly.)  In the background are the beans growing in front of the house.

The cable at the bottom of the row of tomatoes, the string tied to the cable, and the tomato wrapped around the string.  

Tomatoes like this produce lots of even full fruit and keeps them off the ground which prevents disease

Pumpkin wrapped around the string, grown' on up

Even when the pumpkins are growing horizontally towards the pergola they are guided clockwise around the strings.  One tiny little pumpkin is starting to grow.

Do you grow your veggies vertically?   What system works best for you?

Update on Vertical Growing

Its been a while since I have posted, and I knew this would happen with a new blog.  Just like most things I start and don't finish.  But with some reminding and encouraging from my wife, I'm back.
So, I met with Salt Lake City's Mayor Becker about vertical vegitable growing in the front yard.    He said that he is in favor of the idea and that infact he is working on passing a series of green initiatives that will include vertical growing.  He didn't have a time line on when he will present  to the council, so knowing politics and red tape, it could be a while.  he assured me that I would be notified when it does happen though.

Meenwhile I have been very busy working on my own garden.  As you can see I have decided to grow vertically despite the current regulations.  I figure that if I get caught or someone complains, I will just apply for a varience.  I doubt that will happen because we have recieved nothing but compliments from people passing by.

In these pictures you can see that I have tomatoes, pole beans, zuccinis, crookneck squash, and pumpkins all over 2 feet tall.  Thats right those are 6 foot tall pumpkin plants!  Actually, these pictures were taken July 6th.  It is now July 14th and the pumkins are being trained up onto the pergola above the hamock reachin more than 8 feet tall. 
More posts and pictures of the garden comming up soon.

I'm trying to get this blog more noticed, so please link to it from your own blog or Facebook account etc.  The more people see what is possible in their own yards, the more people will decide to live more sustainably.

To Arms!

My Dad used to always wake us up in the morning by yelling, “To arms! To arms! The red coats are coming!” in true Paul Revere fashion. Today I give a similar cry. I am trying to change a small city ordinance that states that vegetables grown in the front yard must be shorter than 24 inches. What a ridiculous ordinance. This ordinance was passed last year because someone complained about a citizen growing corn in their front yard. They thought it was unsightly and complained to the city. This year I am going to try and change it back.

Why? you might ask. Growing plants vertically is a much more efficient way of doing it. By growing plants such as tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and squash vertically you can grow more plants in the same amount of space, you can fend off disease and pests because the leaves aren’t in the dirt, and it is easier to properly care for the plants when watering, pruning, and fertilizing. All this adds up to healthier plants, better produce production, and better looking gardens/yards. These are the best known practices for growing vegetables. This is the way the professional growers (both organic and other farmers) do it.

But why grow vegetables in the front yard? I say why not? I have a few reasons to do it myself.

1. My front yard is on the south side of my house and gets all the sun. There are huge sections of my back yard that never see the sun. I happen to know that the house that was growing the corn in their front yard also faces south.

2. I have 5 kids. They need space to play. They can’t play in the front yard because we live on a busy street. Between the trampoline and swing set there isn’t much room for a garden in the back yard.

3. One of my children has Autism and loves to play in the dirt and has killed vegetables in the back yard in the past.

4. We have a dog that likes to lie down on the vegetables.

5. If you do it right, vegetables can look really good in the front yard garden. Think about all the really tall ornamental grasses people put in their yards. Corn is a type of grass too.

6. I’m sick of mowing my lawn. Too many resources are wasted on lawns. I want to apply those resources to something that will make my life and the lives of my family more healthy, sustainable, and self reliant.

So what can we do about it? I have talked with one of our City Council members and I have made an appointment to meet with the City Mayor next week. You can call up your representative and ask them to make the change as well. Get your neighbors together and make some noise.


*Note: All of the pictures on this post were from a google search for "vertical garden".  None are from my own garden... Later on that.

Death to Grass

In the last post I shared how our remodel has affected my glass work. Well, I have more than the remodel going on to take up all my spare time. We are in the middle of a complete remodel of our front yard. I decided that I am sick of mowing the lawn. I mean think about it: I live on a busy street so the kids can’t play out there, the Huge spruce tree is literally killing off all the grass, I have to mow it regularly which takes time and burns off fossil fuel and I have to fertilize and spray it with weed kill to make it look close to decent. All this extra work for little in return. So we decided to get rid of the lawn. Not only that, but get rid of the large spruce tree as well. I know all you environmentalists are gasping at the idea of cutting out the tree, but it really was killing off our lawn, we couldn’t water it enough, and when the city cut out the tree in the parking strip because it was diseased the spruce tree had a huge bald spot where the other tree had been. We are also hoping to reap some major passive solar through the large front window. Instead of the traditional yard we are putting in a vegetable garden complete with herbs, fruit trees, grapes and berries.

The process hasn’t been easy:

1. We cut down the tree

2. We hired a guy to come and grind out the stump

3. We rented a sod cutter and hauled away the grass

4. We roto-tilled the yard to smooth out the hole left by the stump

5. We rented a trencher to dig the sprinkler system

6. We installed the sprinkler system

7. We rented an auger to dig post holes for the fence, trellis, T-frames and pergola

8. We built the two trellises and the pergola and put in the fence posts and T-frames

9. We built the grow boxes

This is how far we are now. We still need to fill the grow boxes with homemade dirt, plant and put pavers in-between the grow boxes as well as all the little things to tidy it up. We are very excited about having a much larger garden. We hope to be able to grow a whole lot more food this year. Home grown food is definitely the best.