general gardening topics

Our lawns is green everything else around the countryside is brown as harvest draws down towards the end. My garden is black as I plowed it up a couple weeks ago. Had a high of 57°F this afternoon.
 
with the weather so unpredictable i have been contemplating my options on how to garden more effectively , water efficiently , as the ground dries out so quickly with raised beds ect

to be more effective been thinking of doing 1/2 the garden in , No Till procedure , just do full mulch plant bed rows for a experiment 2 or 3 rows and go ground drip or soaker hose watering ( controlled row watering ) i do have a header tank already set up ,instead of mass area watering with large sprays which takes a lot of hrs to wet the area

it normally takes about 4 to 6 hrs to water properly every 2nd day , that's a lot of running time with the mains power bore , where the tank only takes 1/2 hr to fill every few days approximately 2500 litre tank

so please feel free to pass some idea's and comments ,

Shane
 
In the past at a different smaller location before I retired, I had a small garden mainly for tomatoes. I stopped tilling where I planted tomatoes. I had my dad's Troy built tiller. I just dug a hole in the ground with a shovel and used a 1/2 bag of potting soil per tomatoes plant. I had great tomatoes with less work. I also seemed to have better earth worms. Does tilling effect earth worms? I live in Texas so it is pretty easy to grow great tomatoes.
 
I mulch the plants but not the rows. I water when needed with a sprinkler can with lot of the side holes blocked off. Water the plants not the garden. On veining plants I stick a flag at the base of the plants so I know where to water later on.
 
thanks guys for the input i think it's the best solution to the water weather problems i have , i have already got 3 lines of soaker / drip hose to set for 3 rows 20 metres each . i have drip line fed the row of carrots and is working real well so far and my system will be low pressure gravity feed

i will be using 1" low pressure poly pipe from a header tank 2500 litre tank about 80 yards up the hill to the garden the using 7/16 black garden poly for the row feeds and soaker hose for the rows themselves

i am already using 7/16 gravity and drip feed black poly to keep the fruit trees watered which are now starting to set a few fruit on and the same with the water trough raised garden , some parts are on manual timers and some not yet but i want it all on , set and forget timer systems eventually as i'm not there a few days at a time during the week , in the city workin


coxhaus
i would imagine tilling regularly would affect worms reproduction as being chopped up all the time
Shorty
your Dad's idea is where i'm headed i think
chieffan
yes spot watering is way more efficient as i used to mass water but it's so much wasted time and water . i do can water a couple passionfruit vines which i transplanted over Xmas , but to spot water a full row or 3 is just not practical for me i think

Shane
 
We have always watered just the rows and make a moat around individual tomato plants and fill it with water rather than spray on the plants themselves. This helps prevent disease, mildew etc. on the plants and also conserves water. This year I am planning on doing a lot of mulching beside the rows rather than doing a lot of cultivating to keep the weeds down. I've found that keeping it black with the little Honda cultivator, although super efficient at killing weeds, also breaks the soil up too fine and it loses absorbency and bakes hard. There's very little fiber left in the soil, something I'm trying to remedy.
 
Back
Top