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Sunburst permaculture
Sunburst permaculture
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Commenced:
01/11/2014
Submitted:
03/01/2015
Last updated:
07/10/2015
Location:
Carmel, Indiana, US
Climate zone:
Cool Temperate





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Emmanuelle Schwarz Matthew Brown Nathan Dow Peter Lundy

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Testing the gravity-feed drip irrigation of the raised bed

Project: Sunburst permaculture

Posted by Adam Schwarz almost 9 years ago

The last few weekends have been a real pleasure, now that the cold winter has ended and the weather is becoming progressively sunnier and warmer. They have also been extremely busy as we can now get on with all the stuff we have been planning over the winter. Most urgent is the raised vegetable bed, as we'll need to start planting the first seedlings very soon.

We spent a couple of weekends schlepping compost (10 yards) and mulch (6 yards) from GreenCycle up north of Noblesville. We originally had arranged to have it delivered, but since we needed it dumped on the back of our property, this was not possible as the 10-ton truck would not have got very far over the grass it would need to traverse. So instead I rented a pickup truck and spent a total of three days shuttling back and forth, 30 minutes each way, >10 trips in total, 1-2 yards each time.

We thought this would be plenty, but we've used almost all the compost already on the raised bed. We may need to get some more for the terraced garden.

We also ordered the drip hoses and various attachments to provide hassle-free gravity-fed watering - at least that's the theory! They arrived quickly and yesterday we tested the concept.

We'll probably need a larger rain barrel but for now I just mounted the two we already have from the old house on some piles of cinder blocks (one to capture overflow from the other) and swapped the water exit over from the other end of the gutter. The total length of the raised bed is nearly 200ft so I joined two 100ft emitter hoses (www.rainbird.com). One concern I had was whether the gravity feed would provide enough pressure to push the water right to the end. I hooked everything up and it basically worked. It took a few minutes for the water to work its way to the very end - and the pressure will be less as the barrel empties so we'll have to see how that works out. Also, we only tested it from the higher of the two rain barrels as we don't have an overflow pipe rigged up yet.

Overall I was pleased the basic concept seemed to work. In addition to a larger rain barrel we also need to make the rain barrel setup a bit more aesthetic - it is pretty ugly at the moment, but sufficient to test the idea and hopefully provide some hassle-free watering, at least some of the time!

Raisedbed1 Raisedbed2

Comments (4)

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Peter Lundy
Peter Lundy : I've often thought about install a gravity drip system, but never jumped. Usually I hook hose to the barrel and use that to water.

200 ft of raised bed seems like a lot. Are you planning to grow for yourselves or sell some produce?
Posted almost 9 years ago

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Adam Schwarz
Adam Schwarz : Hi Peter. Primarily for ourselves, although we'd consider it a good thing if we had surplus to share. In the last couple of years at our old place we had about 100 sq ft of raised beds and it was far from feeding us, even in the summer months. So we'll see how it goes. We'll see how the drip hose works as the summer progresses. But I'm more concerned about critters eating our plants right now - lots of deer, rabbits and even a resident groundhog! Thinking of getting a dog to keep them wary of the area.... p.s. Jury-rigged overflow pipe was installed prior to last week's rains and worked well :-)
Posted almost 9 years ago

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leo rasy89
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Posted about 1 month ago

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leo rasy89
leo rasy89 : In the vast landscape of online gaming, where genres range from adrenaline-pumping shooters to mind-bending puzzles, there's always room for something fresh and unexpected. Enter the Watermelon Game, a delightful online experience that has been quietly gaining popularity among gamers of all ages.
Posted about 1 month ago

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