A trip Down Memory Lane pt 2

In a nod to our friends at Casa Decrepit I'm going to do a garden report on our old garden and the pond and hardscaping.

Our Glorious Landscaping
As you step out of the side door of the house you are greeted with this nice cobblestone path.
We didn't do this the new owners did and it looks and works great.

 

In no particular order....heh, pictures of our old deck. This was our first deck and
we tried to do a nice job. Remember, we thought that this was going to be our
forever house.

 

A shot of the balcony and the outdoor speakers. Still working and sounding good I'm told

Here's a shot of the deck from the corner looking out on the upper koi pond.



 

These next two pics are supposed to be of the deck but the stupid sun got in the way.

Yep, I'm no pro photog.

Little bit of the lower pond in this shot.

 

The pit of despair as we used to call it. We dug a massive trench all the way across
the backyard to deal with the underground water. This is the sump pit. The two garbage
cans we used are slowly being crushed by the pure clay soil. Can pure clay be called soil?

 

Here we see how the Zmax hangers are holding up. Before install I sprayed them with
two coats of cold galvanizing compound. I see white on them which isn't great. Its a good
guess that all of the hangers look this way. After seven years I'm not sure if this is good or
bad.

 

Here is a shot of something else I was worried about. To hold back the
dirt around the edges of the deck I hammered in rebar then slid sections of
copper pipe over the exposed rebar and put a PT 2by12 against them and then
back filled. They look to be holding up pretty well.

 

I also walked all over the deck and hopped all over it and could not find a
loose board. This was good because I felt like we were pioneers in the, use clips
to hold the ipe down and use construction adhesive where the planks land on the
joists. The deck still looks like furniture when its wet. Its in need of another coat
of Penofin though.

 Here is a funky diagonal shot of the upper pond from the corner veggie filter.

 The waterfall which still has a couple of the plants we left the new owners.

This is a shot of the lower pond and the plant tower. These reed things have
totally taken over, bummer.

In the upper pond we had a skeleton, of course. Mr. Skelly has lost both
of his arms! Stainless steel hardware, ha!

A better overall shot of the lower pond. This pond is ~3' deep and is where
the big fish live.
Overall the ponds have held up fine with the only things needing replacement
being the pumps and UV light.

 

Here is a shot of a dwarf avocado we planted a zillion years ago. We
never got any fruit and now its full!! Plus they trimmed it in a kinda cool
bonsai effect.

Here is the shot of the actual veggie garden part of the yard. Still have
ripening tomatoes because of that giant brick wall keeping the plants warm.

A shot of the avocadoes. They are smooth skinned and dark green. I have
two ripening on the counter and am really going to enjoy eating them.

The Meyer lemon full of lemons. I may pick them and make lemonade as
a surprise for the current owners.

This is some kind of lavender. I just love how it looks like a twisted old tree
near the shore.

Giant well groomed rosemary plant that we planted. I think they should
go the bonsai route on this one.

Just three circuits water the entire yard!

Um....pretty plant.?

One thing the new owners have done is make nice paths trough the yard and
maintain them.

This is a new Mexican lime tree.

This is lemon verbena and its fricken huge.

Ha, smoking section right next to the composter.

Here we have the most ginormous Thai lime tree ever. It smells soooo dang
good...wish the limes were good for anything else besides their zest.

 Ahhh, the blood orange. I think we maybe got 4 oranges off the thing and they
were amazing. I'm super jealous of this.

This is an artichoke plant they we planted a million years ago. It just
keeps coming back and making artichokes? Tasty 'chokes and pretty purple
flowers.

This is a new addition to the yard a cherry tree. Hope its dormant.

Vining roses with LOTS of thorns. We planted this as a sorta natural bob wire,
heh, ghetto living.

More path.

This is something new, they are saving some of the ground water that gets
pumped out of the pit of despair. 

 That's it for the memory tripping.
Up Next:
Knife Catching?? Could it be?

Garden Report May 20th

Actually this is mostly pictures that Irene took when she set up the initial watering system...that I didn't know she took and then that I got a little in trouble for not posting on the original drip watering post....something about efforts being glossed over.......ahem....

Here is Irene's super fab drip watering supplies kit all ready to go!

Irene added these flavor crystals to the soil to help retain moisture.

She set up the drip watering rings around the plants.

Hooked the different rings together with a manifold of her own making.

She ran the tubing inconspicuously....see, no trip hazards!

Here are the new adjustable shower head fountains I bought at the despot for a whopping $.97 each.

I yanked off the soaker hose (which was surprisingly hard!) and installed the adjustable shower heads.

There was some fiddling back and forth to get them to all deliver the same amount of water. But look here it is! That's not a bad looking tomato is it?

Nother sexy tomato shot with watering action. This Zebra is looking pretty good no?

and the pineapple tomatoes with the little basil that couldn't.....this plant looks a little funky still.

I left the soaker hose on this last planter cause it was doing a fine job before...though I don't know if it is still cause its kinda hard to tell how much water is being emitted.

So after all that work and getting the water tuned perfectly its been raining off and on for the last several days and I haven't really needed it....of course.

Watering System for the Tomatoes

So, I know I said that i'd do a watering system for the tomato plants on the deck last weekend...butttt... I had my hands full of other stuff.
Unbeknownest to me while I was performing a hyper-critical daddy job (napping with the baby to get her to stay asleep for a healthy amount of time) Irene went out and piped up the tomatoes for drip watering....

All that was left for me to do was figure out how to get the water to the drip piping. Since the remodel we don't have any outside spigots anywhere in the back half of the house!?!? It didn't make sense to me to run a line from one far corner of the house to the other so I went looking for another solution.

Luckily our house has several abandoned water lines in random places in the house. I found one with a newish looking 1/2" plug that I thought I could remove and figure something out.

Yay for lots of plumbing-fire fittings and widgets. I didn't need to buy anything to make it work. The drip tubing is 1/4" and with the sleeves will work nicely with these compression fittings. So, here's all the fittings that were required. The fitting on the right is the adaptor to go into the 1/2" fitting.

Here's the abandoned cold water line....Look at that ollllld galv water line and all that corrosion...the chances of being able to unscrew that plug without loosening ancient old pipes sealed by corrosion and creating new leaks is very low...
This fricken plug was put in by the foundation contractor to remove some plumbing that was in the way...they didn't use any tape to seal it they just cranked the life outta it! I had to use my 18" pipe wrenches to loosen it!?!? What are the chances that the top part of that pipe aren't going to leak?

Here's a wonky picture of the adaptor installed and the black drip tubing leading up through an existing hole in the wall.

Ya I know that this isn't fine home building..its just a temporary solution so I don't kill the tomatoes.

The tubing goes up to this super wonky zip-tied valve on the baluster near the back door.

Now I just have to open the back door and turn the valve and the tomatoes get watered....it's not wifi enabled and I can't turn it on from a web interface but I think Noel is working on that one?

Here's a picture of a great trip hazard I created with the bad route job I did...That first step is a doozy!

Here is the drip watering in action. I have to admit I don't understand this set-up. The black ring is a 'soaker hose' I think but to me it seems way bigger than it needs to be. Like is the water even going to get to the tomato plant? Also, as far as it being a soaker hose it shoots these teeny-tiny jets of water in completely random direction along its circumfrence? Some of that water is shooting on the plant. Isn't that bad? Like won't it sunburn the plant? I partially burried the soaker hose so there are no more jets of water shooting everywhere.

Now I just have to remember to turn it on and then figure out how long I need to turn it on for at a time to water the plants correctly...sounds like an experiment to me! Science!

Well I double checked for leaks and I got very lucky nothing is leaking!! Hurray! Maybe there is a chance of getting this multicolored tomato plant thing going. Man, I can't wait to make salsa with all of these tomatoes and with the peppers we're growing...I actually don't know when they are supposed to produce fruit...maybe we'll have some by the July 4th BBQ?