The best two tips to manage your garden in busy time
Who doesn’t love fresh vegetables and fruits? Many of us have interest in some sort of gardening like growing vegetables, fruits or flowers.
Many of us spend most of our time in travelling to and fro from work and have less time on other things like gardening.
I remember when I started my first gardening, I used to travel 1.5 hours each way from work to home and vice versa. I hardly used to get time to step into the garden during the weekdays.
Out of my interest, I used to plant the seedlings during the weekend, but was unable to manage them during the week days. Therefore the garden used to dry out and plant survival was very minimal.. I think you may have experienced the same.
At the same time, I didn’t want my backyard to be empty and lifeless. After doing lot of research and analysis, I have found cheaper ways of managing the gardening without much of my physical presence. I strongly believe in zero budget gardening (spending less) and reap more benefits.
I found the below two methods that helped me to shape my garden the way I wanted:
- Fix a timer and Soaker house:
This is the best solution I have ever found. This involves a bit of investment at the start but worth it. There are many varieties of timers and irrigation pipes to fix in the garden.
When you go to hardware store, you find many varieties of timers and irrigation ranging from as cheap as $5 to hundreds of dollars. Initially, I have requested a plumber to fix a timer in the budget.
He got me the timer for $15 and that didn’t last long and the pipe he got was not satisfactory. I end up watering the garden manually and was very tiresome especially during summers.
The hot days with 35”c to 40”c required me to water almost every day. After a week, I realized this is not going to work and my plants might end up drying out. Luckily I got a colleague who is interested in gardening and told him about my problem.
He has suggested me to go for a reasonable price timer and a pipe to select that he has been using for years and happy with the product. I went to Bunnings to find the same timer, it cost me $59 and pipe cost me another $30 for 30 metres in length.
I fixed it to the garden and this arrangement made my life easier. Fix a time on the timer for number of hours in a day and frequency of wetting the garden. I did once in a day for 100 minutes. Just a miracle it worked well and my plants do not need much care manually.
I went for soaker that has holes and drips drop by drop, this helps the root to get wet appropriately.
Do not go for sprinklers or pipes that sprinkles water over the plants. There is a reason for this, sprinkling the water over the plants attracts more insects, mould and also burn the leaves when the sun is hot.
Always watering near the root is good and healthy for the plant to grow by leaving the leaves and buds dry.
Steps to fix the timer and soaker house:
- Assemble the timer with batteries
- Fix the timer to the tap in the garden
- Fix a normal hose pipe to accommodate the water until the garden soaker hose pipe as shown in the picture.
Note: This step is not required if your tap is located within the garden
- Fix the other end of the hose pipe to the soaker hose pipe in the garden (as shown below)
- Spread the soaker hose pipe to water the plants. The other end of the soaker hose pipe is closed anyway.
- Bottle Drip irrigation:
This is another way of watering plants in an economical way. This is more suitable for balcony gardens or plants in pots. I fixed the problem for the garden, but was thinking about the plants that are in pots.
This method helped to solve the problem. I know most of us have used up Coke or Sprite bottles lying around the house or in our recycle bins.
You can use them for best use from now on as below. I bought the below cones from Bunnings for $2 each (attached to the bottle below) that has little wholes to drip the water from the bottle, fix this to the bottle and fill the bottle with the water and set how many drops you need by rotating the cap given.
Make sure you make a small whole with a safety pin (on the bottom of the bottle) to air and release the water from the holes; stick them in the pots. I also tried without having this cone shaped attached to the bottle, I was not successful as the bottle used to fall off when there was heavy wind or had problem in emptying the water out. When I made more wholes, the water used to drain out quickly. So after some analysis, I fixed this and my plants are happily growing now.
Benefits I have gained from the above:
- No manual care on every day basis
- The soil has become more fertile; as I see earthworms in the wet area
- My investment was recouped in just 2 months, I did not buy any vegetables for 6 months now
- I made new friends sharing my extra produce
- I ate fresh and seasonal fruits and veggies on daily basis
- I froze some of the vegetables for the off season.
Why late ! think about getting one in your garden. Let me know if any other methods available to make your garden healthy with less spend. Let me know in comments what methods you have in your garden.
