Busy Day

 Compost Day 16 - turned the heap outside in this evening, sprayed it down externally afterwards.  The frame is now rationalising to two star droppers permanently hammered in, one moveable dropper, one six foot length of stick and chicken wire.  Much quicker, cleaner and more efficient than previous iterations.  Used a shovel to scrape the exterior of 'old' heap and piled into centre of where new heap would be within the frame.  Then used a fork to build up the heap around this centre with the centre portion of the 'old' heap.  Some identifiable pigweed remains, a fair bit of pea straw and the odd bit of chicken poo.  I tried to spread them evenly as described.  There were also some dry patches.  I didn't add any internal water as the rest of the heap looked about right in terms of moisture content, just tried to spread the dry around to allow capilliary action to do its thing.  Temps were 40C - 45C during various probes during the day.  The core was 50C - 55C when I turned it in the evening.

Watering with milk cartons and 3" PVC pipe - test results.  Six inches away from the milk carton soaker the ground was damp to a depth of over six inches.  Six inches away from the pipe the ground was dry to about that depth and somewhat moist beneath that.  The pipe creates a presumably deep plume of subsoil water, the soaker works at the topsoil level.

Watering with cartons - first iteration.  Widening the entry hole for water by cutting with scissors.  Lose probably less than 100mL capacity due the design of the milk bottle.  Would be nice to develop a funnel for it so that when permanently in place one doesn't have to lean at all to pour water in from bucket device.  Place the bottles approximately 50cm apart along a row, fill with water, wait up to ten minutes to drain entirely.  Move on or repeat.

The vision is to have all beds adequately covered with 'permanently' located cartons anchored in the mulch (perhaps with a few stones in them to further weight them down when empty) amongst garden beds so as to provide adequate coverage for the surface layers, rows, whatever.  In addition, have at least one PVC pipe per garden bed to 'pump' water into a subsoil plume (the principle being to store as much water in the ground as possible).

Besides being a more rational, efficient and routinised form of watering, this is also better from an Occ Health and Safety perspective.

A further improvement will be to develop water points through the garden to enable filling of buckets etc as close to their end point of use as possible.  This will reduce the time and effort involved in getting water from tank to watering cartons and, through them, the soil.  This to be done with minimal shifting of hoses, monitoring multiple water point levels etc.  Hence...

Siphon system improvements.  I used longest length of dripper hosepipe that I had to hand  (about 5m) to siphon from one of my 72L containers to another that was located about 4m away.  After repairing holes with duct tape I loaded it up by submersing coil of the pipe until entirely submerged and all bubbles have left system.  Then place thumb over apature and uncoil the pipe as required to move the stoppered end into the new receptacle.  Manually suck the air that has crept in around the thumb and release water into the new receptacle.  It is now part of the system (regulates with the others to maintain a constant water level across them all).

There are lengths of dripper hosepipe around the yard from the previous owner.  Much of it is burried under mulch, some under 'hard surfaces' (eg driveway) in irrigation conduit.  I have started salvaging this, removing the drippers and taping up the holes.  I'll probably get close to 30m of pipe by the time I'm done.  With up to six 72L fibreglass plant containers to hand I should be able to work out a good system, with a 'master cylinder' near the hose/tank area and others located at logical points through the garden connected by properly laid syphon hose (not a trip hazard, easy to pick up and recharge if and when required).  Then, a few plants and maybe some fish in the 72L containers and I'll be ready to start filling up my carton based watering system with relative ease.  Yay.

Repotted Gross Lesse tomato seedlings into toilet roll seedling containers, put ten of these into wind protecting plastic pot, soaked and put out to tend on the stone bench beneath pine tree.

Test potted two of my lettuce seedlings into milk carton planter pots (using 2L cartons for this).  The wind shield works well enough.  Will see how they go before going to scale.