Science | How Stuff Works
Spinach
Sweet Red Onions
Head Lettuce
My veggies were smiling when I went out to take these pictures this morning. Everything seems to be doing very well now.
I told you how hard I was trying to get the irrigation system going for my garden a couple of days ago. If my husband and I couldn’t get it going, I was going to have to fill my watering can over and over to give them a drink. We FINALLY figured out why we weren’t getting water in the outside agricultural water faucet we have – a faucet control in the well house was turned off instead of on.
Now that it is running perfectly, and the timer is set for daily watering, we are getting rain every day from yesterday through Thursday of next week. A beautiful illustration of Finagle’s Law of Dynamic Negatives. (Finagle’s law of dynamic negatives (also known as Melody’s law, Sod’s Law or Finagle’s corollary to Murphy’s law) is usually rendered as “Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment.”) We also have it to mean “the more you need it, the harder it is to fix” or “you will get it fixed when you no longer need it.”
My garden is such a joy. The boxes we built allow me to continue gardening with pleasure, not having to bend over double or get down on my hands and knees over and over. The fence keeps large critters out. The chicken wire around the bottom keeps small critters out. The Mel’s Mix in the boxes (peat moss, vermiculite, and as many different kinds of compost as you can find or make) allows plants to grow well and happily, not having to depend on the quality or quantity of our soil.
The cool weather crops, spinach and head lettuce, will hopefully do really well before it gets too hot here. The red onions will stay where they are until harvest, probably in October. When it gets a bit warmer, I’ll add yellow squash and radishes, if not some other things, to the garden.
I have two large brick planters on the other side of the house that we converted to be square foot planters. We devote both of them to tomato plants.
So far, I have smiling, happy veggies. Fingers crossed that this will continue.
Have a happy Saturday!
creativeartworksblog 
I absolutely love your raised garden beds! They’re beautifully done. I’m green with envy with your irrigation. Your irrigation is impressive to say the least. I’m very curious about how did you made the bottoms for the beds?
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Thank you! I love the raised beds, too. The only ones I had seen still had you bending over. These I can just walk up to and do all I need to do. The beds are BOXES – 4’x4’x8″ with half a sheet of plywood on the bottom. We built them tight, then drilled holes on around the bottom edges on all sides for good drainage. We put black plastic on the bottom of each box to hold most of the Mel’s Mix in. We made the ‘support tables’ out of angle iron – a table shape to hold the box on legs at the proper height (in my case, chest high.).
The irrigation is a hose that runs from an agricultural type faucet out to the garden. It splits off to the two ‘rows’ of beds. If you look at the pics carefully, you can see the hoses attach to pvc pipe fitted with faucets. Hoses go down the middle of each row, with a sprinkler attached to the middle of each box. It was a lot of work to set up, but now it gets water once a day automatically for however much time we want.
Please let me know if you have more questions.
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This is looking fab! I have begun sorting our veggie garden out this weekend, a bit too early to plant what I want just yet over here, but seeing your piccies is inspiring me to get ready for the last of the frosts!! 😀
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Thanks, EJ. May we both end up with all the veggies we can eat or give to friends.
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