Aqua Systems Oscillating Sprinkler

 

I have to say I have done very well off Freecycle recently as people are clearing their sheds and getting rid of items that they have bought but never actually got around to using. 

The latest acquisition is an Aqua Systems Oscillating Sprinkler system made of UV stabilised material that has an adjustable core that can be rotated to give optimum area coverage with either a 6, 12 or 19 hole jet nozzle. 

It also has a filter washer to avoid sprinkler jet blockages. The filter is removable for flushing and cleaning of the water jets. 

The dial gives easy water flow control and the sliding adjustment for multiple watering directions and limiting the area coverage.  

Water System Extended

Early morning visit from 7:30 - 10:00, emptying six buckets of spent compost on the beds and topping up the two Daleks with grass from the back garden. 

Then I set about finding the hose pipe fitting and lengths of hose and started to piece together the watering system from the corner of plot 1 opposite the tap and dip tank up plot 1 with an outlet every other bed and then along to plot 1A joining onto the existing watering system on plot 1A. 

I had already removed the hose going to the water tank at the plot 1A end of the allotment, as using it had caused so much trouble with the site arse hole. Yep every site has one and at the end of the day it was just easier to source my water from the other end of the plot now I have plots 1 & 1A. I don't have to interact with the numb scull at all.

The hoses are all out in the open at the moment, but the pipes will be lost in the wood chip paths eventually. 

It looks like I may need a few more ends to get the coverage I want around the whole plot, but at least I now have water for the full length of plot 1 and 1A and I'm ready for the growing season.  

Although we are supposed to have a couple of rain showers today I watered the Raspberries, the potatoes in buckets and the onion sets this morning because I can without using the watering cans.

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.

Update Comfrey Compost and Onions

Here is an update on the comfrey on Spencer Road allotment Plot 23B










There is only 29 days between the top two photographs









There are 16 more days between the second and third making 45 days between the top and bottom photograph.

Such is the rate of growth of comfrey in its second year






I have cut it back and placed two layers of comfrey in Dalek 2 either side of a layer of grass and watered it in as it was placed.

The 2 litre pop bottle full of sand weight has dropped further into the pipe telling me that the consolidation and rotting process is on its way.

In the bottom of the milk bottle is some nice dark semi pure comfrey, a very small amount of water was added originally to wet the comfrey to assist in kicking off the rotting down process.

Once the weight can no longer be seen the pipe will be topped up with more cut comfrey

The Estima Spuds in bed 2 have recovered from the frost scorching and are starting to find their way through the holes in the weed membrane. Bed 4 in the background was uncovered and due to the lack of rain the leaves have not degraded as much as I hoped for and as I didn't have time to plant the remainder of the spuds I cut the comfrey and covered then added more leaves to the bed and gave it a good drowning.

The Japanese and Radar onions are doing well in bed 6 but were in desperate need of a good drowning.

The spring onions were added to the Red Onion Bed 3 and watered in

I'm a little disappointed in the lack of progress of the tree onions to grow, by now I had thought they would have been much higher than they are.

I started setting up the top half of the watering system around the beds that are already in place basically because it was all so dry and needed watering badly.

Two hours goes much too fast, there is so much still to do and so little time to get it done in

Watering System For Spencer Road

On the weekend whilst shopping I picked up some three way male hose connectors and some female and female stop connectors as they were being sold at 50p each at TESCO.

The female stop connectors stop the water from flowing when there isn't something installed and after the problems I have had with the spray guns this year leaking on Mill Green after getting them out of storage and re fitting them. I have decided to install a stop connector at the end of each hose, so I can move the head from pipe to pipe rather than buy an end for each pipe.

Like Mill Green the intention is to limit the amount of dragging the hose around the plot by installing a system of hoses from left to right in the diagram above, one hose covers the Greenhouse, the next Beds 1-4, then 5 - 8, 9 -12 the fruit cages & Air Walking Onions then the Daleks and Comfrey Beds.