Thursday 5 July 2018

Water Wars


Due to the lack of rain I have been visiting the plot either first thing in the morning or in the evening to water and to fill up the comfrey pipes as they appear to be compressing the comfrey at the rate of the length of the pop bottle weight every couple of days.

The comfrey is flowing very well from the short pipe but I think the large pipe is blocked as the comfrey appears to have overflowed from the top! 

Not a job I'm looking forward too and perhaps the last thing to do before I come home on Sunday incase I get it all over me!

Last week I turn off the tap with a splitter on and cut off the water to another plot holder. He has two plots that are at different ends of the site and are so overgrown you can't see him on them when he is and it was an accident, I turned the water on and just turned it off before I went. He had a go at me and I told him I hadn't seen him and to just go and turn the bloody thing back on and to stop making a song and dance about it. 

One evening this week I had an altercation with him as he thought I had turned off his tap on the splitter fixed to the standpipe. The fact of the matter was that the standpipe was not turned on when I got to it and I did turn off the splitter that my hose was not connected too as I wanted a full head of pressure so that I could get the watering over and done with relatively quickly. 

The guy charged onto a fellow plot holders plot that I was on at the time and came toe to toe and nose to nose shouting the odds and tried to intimidate me. I believe he now realises that getting in my face so to speak didn't scare me and I'm not into being intimidated as I put my hand on his chest and held him back saying there was no need to get so close and into my personal space, which did make him bounce up and down for a while and increase the verbal nonsense he was spouting.   

I'm not a violent person, and if there was no option but to retaliate then that's what would happen, I don't like too because when I see red and blood I want to continue seeing it and quite frankly I have scared the shit out of myself as to just how aggressive I can actually be when pushed over the limit, and the worrying thing is last time it happened when in my late teens so 40 odd years ago I enjoyed it far too much, and since then have always tried to be the grownup in these kind of situations and if at all possible the piece maker. 

It appears you can't talk logically or sensibly with a terrorist, a wife with PMT or a plot holder who has his nickers in a twist about a hose that could easily be turned back on even if it had been turned off deliberately which it hadn't.

Discretion being the better part of valour, this morning I extended the watering system I have installed so that I can actually connect to the stand pipes at either end or both ends of my plots. It has been said to me that I'm letting him win and should just continue using the tap at the top end of my plot, but really in the grand scheme of things is it worth getting elevated blood pressure over a tap and hose when the likelihood is that the bloody things are going to be banned shortly anyway. 



So here is how the final system will look once all the beds are in and it just means that there is a hose I can use at every other set of beds. Each one of the offset hoses is long enough to give me coverage over a 3 metre or more strip of the plot from top to bottom along its length. 

The system on the right which is plot 1A has been there more of less since I installed the beds in 2013 and for the moment the main feed pipe and one offset is in on plot 1 until the beds go in and then I will cut the main feed and put in the offset hose and watering head.



Each offset has a watering head on it, for speed and efficiency and with pop bottles installed with pin holes in them in the beds its possible to water at depth on a number of beds at once if it needs it. Less evaporation, roots have to go and look for the water and over all less water used.





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