If you use Drip Irrigation:
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Spacing:You will place the properly spaced drip line down before you plant
your seeds or seedlings. Drip line spacing is 4", 6", 8", 9", 12" 15", 18",
24", 36", and 48" (based on my internet buys). Please note that driplines
have a life of 7 to 10 years depending on how you treat them.
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Cost: Most can be bought in 50' or 100' lengths for about 20 cents a foot
or less. (If you put together a neighborhood gardening club, you can buy
in bulk. Note: 1/4" is for short distances under 30 feet. 1/2" will go several
hundred feet.)
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Weeds: With drip irrigation, you only water the plant, not the weeds. The
time it takes to lay down a drip line is far less than the time it takes
to weed a garden over and over.
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Mulch: If you don't want weeds at all, spread a two-inch layer of mulch over
your soil before you plant. Put the mulch on top of the drip line.
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You will have few, if any, any weeds as the decomposing much robs the nitrogen
from the top 1" of soil which prevents weed germination/growth.
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Seedlings are not affected by mulch. Seeds can be planted with mulch pulled
back until the plants are six inches tall. [Root systems basically echo the
above-ground foilage in density.].)
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I have a forester friend who delivers dump-truck loads of mulch for free
tho I give him $20 and veggies for his kindness. Call up a tree service to
see if they will deliver mulch. Also, city and counties provide free mulch
derived from tree removal--they don't deliver but it is free.
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Target watering: With drip irrigation, usually .5 gal/hr, you create a
tear-shaped water bubble under your plant which prompts it to root deeper
for better wind strength compared to sprinkling, hosing or broadcast watering.
With hosing, you either flood or ignore a plant. Drip waters each plant the
same so that if you have a problem plant, you know it is not watering (unless
the drip emitter is clogged).
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Lower cost: With drip, you use only about 20%-25% of the water consumed by
sprinkling. A lot of the water evaporates on in the air and most evaporation
from the soil top. Little evaporation occurs with drip irrigation. In Richmond,
at $4/1000 gallons, watering a plant for an hour with a .5/gph emitter will
cost $.002 or 1/5 of a penny.
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Diseases: If you want to disease your plants with every microbe in the air,
sprinkle them. Your laundry washing machines cleans your clothes, in part,
by water absorbing the loose dirt and microbes on your clothes. One of the
first and most common diseases is mildew which chokes the leaves thus killing
the plant. Another common disease is tomato or potato blight. One garden
rule is to not work in the garden if the plants are wet. Every time you touch
a plant, any microbes on you will transfer.
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Timer: With drip irrigation, you can buy a cheap $10/$12 hose timer to set
watering from a few minute to two hours. I don't care who you are, you are
going to have days in which you don't feel like watering or you leave the
water on all day or or night.
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Fertilizer: With drip lines, you can buy a cheap $10/$12 in-line fertilizer
at Ace Hardware
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Bug killers: Many insects develop in the soil before emerging to devastate
your crop. There are a number of eco-friendly bug stoppers derived from tree
bark. Healthy trees resist bug infestations by having natural bug stoppers.
That is what you put into your ferilizer pot to put about the roots of your
plants.
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