WATER-WISE, PART 2

 

Hose at the ready:
Thanks, Oak Island

            Tim and I have an in-ground irrigation system. I love it for convenience’s sake, because it frees me from dragging hoses and sprinklers around the yard. Or at least it did until our megalomaniacal town government forced The World’s Most Expensive Sewer System down our throats just because they want the 45-foot height restriction lifted so we can become Myrtle Beach.

            Be that as it may, I no longer use the irrigation system except for the drip zone. I’m back to hauling hoses to water the south-side nursery pots and any new planting that isn’t reached by dripline until it stops wilting. The lawn is on its own. Spray zones are inefficient anyway, as they are subject to wind and evaporation issues. Plus, I’m not totally convinced the perfectly manicured lawn—an artificial, high-maintenance monoculture—is such a great idea in the first place. (In Second Nature, Michael Pollan does a hilarious riff on his dad’s refusal to buy into the tyranny of grass in a Long Island suburb in the 1950s. See Good Reads at right.)

Mr. Pollan takes on the POA
in Chapter 1

Nonetheless, irrigation systems relieve the daily tedium of hydrating your landscape—just set the clock and let her go while keeping a weather eye out for, well, the weather. Of course, nothing yet devised by man is without its little hiccups. Lots of things can go wrong, starting with installation. Some installation contractors have a deep understanding of, indeed an affinity for, the hows and whys of irrigation mechanics. Others just stick pipe and wires in the ground and hope for the best.

Even flawlessly installed systems, however, can run into trouble for a number of other reasons. Programmophobia, the unreasoning fear of touching the controller, crops up with alarming frequency. Most clocks offer two or three programs, each of which has three possible start times. It’s important not to overlap start times, because when you do, no water comes out anywhere. You’ll need to know how to set zone run-times and water days for every program you use. It’s also important to know how to run the system manually, both from the clock and at the valves. This is essential because how much and when you’re watering what changes fairly often. Why’s that? you ask. Because water requirements change over time. Well-established lawns and shrubbery need less (or no) supplemental irrigation, especially in cool seasons. For those of you who keep adding plants like I do, drip is pretty much forever. You’ll also need to know how to change the back-up battery that lives inside the clock, which saves your watering program for 24 hours should you lose power for any reason. The battery cannot run the system, however, so get in the habit of checking both the controller and the ground-fault-interrupter outlet it’s plugged into after every thunderstorm and whenever you have to reset your microwave clock.



A few other common irrigation aggravations include:

The Fitzgeralds' Nelson
irrigation computer-clock



·         Rain sensors. These excel at sensing rain and turning the system off but to date have proven lacksidaisical about turning things back on after the rain stops. Glenn, our irrigation guy, assures us they’re getting better. Uh-huh.

·         People operating vibrating plows, trenchers and core aerators. All these pieces of equipment can (and do!) cut through, shatter and/or puncture hard pipe and driplines without anyone’s knowledge until the grass and shrubs start to go brown and crunchy despite the fact that new wetlands seem to be forming out at the front of your property.





Watch out for this guy
with his Dingo trencher



            ·         Thirsty rodents. Squirrels regularly splash all the water out of  the bird bath I installed expressly for their convenience and enjoyment, then gnaw holes in my driplines to get a drink. Flirty-tailed little bastards. And the raccoons are just as bad.

            ·         Summer vacations. If anything is going to go terribly wrong with your irrigation system, it will happen when you’re out of town. Ask someone you trust to check on things inside and out while you’re gallivanting. Especially after thunderstorms.



Dripline,
the most efficient way to water



In irrigation as in life you get what you pay for. An all-drip system—one without any spray heads, even for the lawn—is the most cost-over-time and water-use efficient way to go. It is also the most expensive initially, even assuming you find a contractor who’s heard of all-drip irrigation and knows how to install it. Be aware that quality of materials varies significantly. Heads range from el-cheapo plastic to top-of-the-line brass. Although none of them lasts forever (imagine grains of dirt grinding away at moving parts every time a head pops up, rotates and retracts), the replacement interval for the higher-quality models far exceeds that of bargain-basement specials. The basic system is a sprays-for-grass-and-drip-for-garden-areas array. Insist on a zone dedicated to dripline, for three reasons: 1) many plants, like roses and azaleas, resent overhead watering as this practice promotes fungal growth and sun-scorched foliage; 2) at some point you’re going to be able to drastically reduce the water you give your grass, and where does that leave all those garden areas serviced by the same zone?; and 3) do you really want to make life easier for those weeds in your “natural” areas?

For your information, a turf head—the large, rotating sprayer—spews out about two-and-a-half gallons a minute. Spray heads—the smaller ones that water in a constant arc—throw out four or so gallons a minute. Neither of these figures accounts for evaporation or wind dispersal. If time hangs heavy on your hands, you can count the number and type of heads per zone and multiply by the appropriate gallons-per-minute to determine how much water comes out: divide the number of gallons by the square footage of the area (rough length by approximate width—it’s easier if you make everything a rectangle) to learn how much water you’re providing per square foot per cycle. You’ll probably be appalled.



Turf head spewing
two-and-a-half gallons per minute
while rotating 180 degrees



Spray head (on a riser)
blowing out four gallons per minute
in a fixed arc





Emitters and the special
emitter tool for making holes
in the drip pipe
(the red-top one is an 8 liter,
the green-bottom one a 1 gallon 



Driplines have little button- or spigot-like things stuck into them, called emitters, where the water comes out.  They are calibrated to release two gallons/eight liters per hour or one gallon/four liters per hour. You can tell which ones you have by peering closely at the thing—it has a teeny-tiny 2 or 8, or a 1 or  4 stamped on it somewhere. Emitters should be placed well away from the main stem of the plant but still within the rootball area. How long and how often you run the drip zone depends on the number, placement and output of the emitters, and on your soil type.



While a well may seem an attractive alternative to connecting to municipal sources, the hidden costs of “free” water can be prohibitive. Mainly, you have to worry about the pump. In my neighborhood, irrigation-only wells tend to be shallow, and the pump ends up above-ground, usually in an aesthetically inappropriate place. Pump installation quality varies as much as that of irrigation systems themselves, and for the same reasons. Preventing cracked lines during winter is another headache. Because watering during the cold months in mild-winter areas is essential for newly installed plants and shrubs, you can’t just winterize the pump and turn it off. Anti-freezing devices that involve electricity (heat-tape, light bulbs, etc.) are subject to the vagaries of the power grid. You can also count on dirt getting drawn up with the water, so your driplines will need to be blown out once or twice a year to prevent them from clogging up. (Do this by removing whatever crimps the end of the line, then run the zone for a minute or two.) This is especially true if you use quarter-inch tubing to irrigate your containers—these plug up in no time at all. Emitters at the ends of these "spaghetti" lines may also become obstructed, reducing—or nullifying—their effectiveness.           



An unburied and unmulched
dripline in my back yard



By the way, driplines should never be buried, only covered with mulch. Over time, however, mulch and dead leaves decompose, turning into soil. Tiny surface roots work their way over your dripline and grow into bigger surface roots. My point is that, left to her own devices, nature buries driplines. It’s really to your advantage to keep them up on the surface where you can easily get at them to add or subtract emitters and line extensions.

 That’s all I have to say about computer-controlled irrigation systems. Have additional questions? Totally confused? Leave a comment, or email me, and I’ll try to clarify the murky area.

Oak Island got .34" more rain on Saturday, bringing us up to a half-inch for June. Next time: rain gardens and water harvesting. Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                        Kathy

P.S. – Summer solstice occurs on the 21^st at 1:16 pm EDT. It feels so ironic that the days begin to shorten when it’s so damn hot out, don’t you think?

MOVING RIGHT ALONG

            How did it get to be May so soon? Weren’t we whining about the cold in February ten minutes ago?

            Ancillarily… I love the word “ancillary.” The last time all my best college friends got together—about eight hours after graduation—Jeff Billet tossed off “ancillary” in conversation. At that moment, it struck me I’d probably never hear that word used so casually ever again. So far, I’ve been right, a tiny miracle in itself. (Jeff subsequently went to law school and joined the Air Force, which is about what you’d expect from a guy who used “ancillary” in a sentence. Wherever you are, Jeff, Tina’s roommate Kathy salutes you.) Anyway. Ancillarily, am I the only one whose projects take so much more time than they ought? You know, like finishing this sentence? Remember the list of jobs Tim and I were going to accomplish in a weekend back in “The Best Laid Schemes”?  Well, ha.

            Friday we bought some of the materials for some of the tasks.



Pre-emitted dripline
snakes through New Bed 



On Saturday, Tim worked all afternoon installing drip irrigation to the New Bed and the Big Island in our front yard. He started on the back garden, but ran out of pipe. Here’s a picture of the dripline snaking through New Bed (remember you can click on it to make it bigger). It’s that pre-emitted stuff, with really strange-looking emitters every 12 inches, whether you need them or not. It’s not my favorite, as it can put water where you don’t need it: but, as you can tell by the snaky way it’s laid out, I don’t have a clear idea of what’s going where yet. Plus we have about 800 feet of it clogging up our storage area. Plus it was free (good friends in the irrigation business): for gardeners on a tight budget, that’s a consideration.

It was my turn on Sunday. Thought I’d pop the three ‘Better Boy’ tomatoes into the east end of New Bed after building a three-way support from concrete-reinforcing wire; plant cucumber seedlings and nasturtiums together (hoping to confuse the pickleworm moths) and hang them on the front porch; get the last five delphiniums in the ground before they bloom out; and start configuring the arbor/vine-support that’s going to shade the path through New Bed. That was the plan.

Didn’t quite work out that way.



Accidentally "watered up" weeds



First I had to weed. Here’s a picture of a representative sample of New Bed as it looked Sunday morning. Now, if I were a liar, which I’m not—not because of impeccable moral standards but because I’ve just never been very good at it, laughing or blushing at the wrong moment—I’d tell you that I’d encouraged the weedy growth by a process known as “watering up.” That’s when you turn over the soil in an area slated for future planting and allow the weed seeds in it germinate; then you pull them, allegedly getting a jump on the first crop of undesirables. In my case, however, neglect watered them up. The end result is the same, but I don’t want to foster the notion that I am in any way holier than thou.

Besides, I enjoy weeding. Spent a pleasant hour pulling and humming and grinding sand into my bare knees. Yes, it was warm enough for the short overalls. I call them “oversomes.” What with the morning jammies parade, then the oversomes for an entire afternoon, we are lucky in our tolerant and good-humored neighbors.



Concrete reinforcing wire sheets
leaning against a pallet



Second job: assemble some sort of support from the four sheets of concrete reinforcing wire T and I brought home Friday. This is what it looks like. At about eight dollars a sheet, it’s one of the cheapest staking materials going.

Tim worries about me a lot. He thinks I’m a delicate flower. While flattering, it’s pretty much untrue, as my floral nature runs closer to kudzu than night-blooming cereus. I am kind of uncoordinated, prone to dropping things, cutting off the ends of my fingers with pruners, and stumbling a lot. The reinforcing wire posed a particular dilemma for Tim, as it features pre-rusted sharp-pointed ends for me to impale myself on, resulting in a grisly death from lockjaw. (That’s a joke: we assiduously keep our tetanus shots up to date. You should, too, if you’re playing in the dirt.)  Well, he paints on Sundays. He also knew what I planned to get up to with that wire. He extracted a promise from me that I would wear boots and gloves if I got within 30 feet of it. Fortunately, I was working in the front yard, hard by his studio. With all the windows open, he contented himself with listening for streams of curses followed by silence.



The arrows point to how
Tim hooked the three panels
together into a stable triangular
support



The wire sheets are four feet by eight. I clipped two feet off the bottom of the first sheet, thinking maybe three two-by-four panels hooked together somehow would work. Then I remembered ‘Better Boys’ are indeterminate, meaning their ultimate height is unknown. (It also means they bear fruit all season instead all at once, like the shorter determinates.) Four feet won’t be tall enough. Bolt-cutters in hand, I snip the remaining six-by-four foot sheet in two lengthwise. That’s better.

Now. How to configure, anchor and stabilize? At this point, Tim couldn’t stand the suspense of waiting for me to hurt myself any longer and came out to help in his blazing-blue nitrile gloves and his slippers. (We really are quite the sartorially splendid pair.) Where I had assembled a jumble of metal and bamboo stakes and rolls of bendy-wire, he suggested an inherently stable triangle, hooked together at three points per side with the aforementioned sharply pointed ends, and clipping off the rest. Brilliant! (See picture at right.)



A four-to-six-sheet layer of newspaper
helps deter weeds



The most dangerous portion of the day’s activities over, T goes back inside. I plant the three tomatoes, one on each outer side of the triangle support. I know the irrigation’s working because once I dug down a couple of inches, the sand was moist enough to form loose clumps. Now it’s time to mulch.

I save newspaper for just such occasions. (Our spare bathtub is full of it, so don’t plan to visit.) I covered the ground with it, pictured here. Why? A four-to-six-sheet layer suppresses weeds for the first season, then decomposes, adding to the soil profile. Because newspaper on its own is not particularly attractive, you need to cover it with something. Continuing my quest for cheapness by utilizing whatever’s at hand, I raked up leaves and dead grass from the lawn (a win-win proposition) and piled them on top of the paper.



Lawn detritus serves nobly
as cheap mulch



Ta-da!

A short struggle with the hose ensued. (Seems I’m always struggling with hoses. They’re never where you need them to be when you need them there.) But I’m a patient sort—not to mention stubborn—and we were soon sorted. I gave the tomatoes a deep drink while smugly surveying my handiwork.

The smugness faded when I realized the mosquitoes were biting, meaning it was five-ish. So much for all those other Sunday projects. Still, I’d managed to accomplish something. I’d been an ant. And there’s a certain quiet satisfaction in that.

                                                *****

For locals, two notes of interest. One, Backyard Wild in Southport now stocks ladybugs, earthworms and flash-frozen mealyworms--check it out! Two, Plant Delights Nursery in Garner is holding its second Spring Open House this coming weekend, your chance to bring home some unusual plants to trial: hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and from 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Details and directions are at the website linked above.

Hope you had a joyful and fertile Beltane. Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                        Kathy

P.S.  The early peaches tasted tart, but they were juicy and had good texture, not at all mealy. Can't wait for the second batch!