30 July 2010

Happy anniversary!

We just celebrated our 8th anniversary, and while some might indulge in romantic evenings, flowers and expensive jewelry, we chose to celebrate with a mutual gift of rocks... LOTS of rocks. With the help of slave labor (a.k.a the kids), the garden paths are finished.

The beds are in full production, and the early summer harvest has begun, though albeit, it has been an unusually mild season. The dogs enjoy their daily garden walk, running the fence with the goats, chasing crows, hunting gophers, and ending with a good roll in the melon bed (grrrr). It is the joy and satisfaction of a job well done.


2 comments:

  1. Very nice raised bed setup. Is the water on a timer or manual? Looks manual.

    ReplyDelete
  2. We designed the water system to be both manual and automatic. The primary flow valves (a total of 4 for the garden region)located behind the barn will operate either way, though it is currently manual until we finish hooking it up to the electrical system. We then ran pvc underground to each bed and row of grapes. Each individual bed or grape row can likewise be shut on/off as needed. The intent was to be able to control water flow specifically when and where we want; if a bed is temporarily empty, it can be shut off from the system without compromising the entire garden.

    The beds, themselves, are actually in-ground rather than raised in this portion of the garden. We initially used 4" irrigation tubing (which was given to us for free) to delineate the beds, but switched to wood. Last year, much to our dismay, we discovered that the pvc irrigation would bend significantly with temperature and became unreliable. Gravel was added to the paths to reduce weeds and help retain heat for managing a more consistent temperature in the beds. We considered using mulch for the pathways, but chose gravel as a more permanent solution.

    ReplyDelete