Just recently, the water storage for our area (Sydney) got down to 40% and was dropping, so they decided to implement stage 2 water restrictions. Stage 1 have been in for months but they are fairly mild, stage 2 water restrictions prohibit the use of hoses for irrigation of gardens. *insert sound of needle scraping across a record*!
We use a number of highly efficient methods of watering our plants and most of them will work by running water from the tanks (we have about 19,000 litres of rainwater storage) by gravity directly to the deep tube waterers, ollas, buried capsules etc. We even get enough pressure from our 12 volt pump to use a leaky hose installed to irrigate the herb spiral, but!
Setting up to mass produce ollas!
Where the system came to a screeching halt was that we have buried pipe irrigation in three of the 3 metre long beds and two of the two metre long beds and they (especially in the 3 metre beds) need the water pressure from the town water hose to be able the water to get all the way around and irrigate the entire bed. It’s a shame because otherwise I like buried pipe because you can set up the hose and water for 10 minutes and job done, plus only one hole, which is easily capped, for the chooks to push soil into when the chook tractor is on that plot.
I had to act to be able irrigate those beds and keep them productive under the level 2 restrictions (and what would happen if we ever went to level 3???). After much thought I decided to replace the buried pipe in the 3 metre beds with ollas. This was an easy decision to make, and it was easy to make the ollas as well, but to dig them in to the dry, hard soil? Not so much fun!
Changing Over
When the soil is this dry, you need to add water!
Almost there!
Done!
To fix the 2 metre ones, they would remain in place but have surgery and I would install another filler point at the other end of the veggie patch so that, by using the 12v pump and pumping in water from both ends, the whole patch would be able to be irrigated.
The installation of the ollas was a fair bit of work, although it is now complete and the beds are producing. To make the modifications to the 2 metre beds I waited until the chook tractor had been through and the beds were about to be replanted before doing the work. As luck would have it, by that time we had good rain and it was less of an issue but I still went ahead and made the mods, which was a pretty quick and easy thing to do.
Surgery time!
Done!
If living here has taught me anything it is that drought will come again, and next time I will be ready for it!
