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| Basement Garden 8/5 - just before vacation Note Beans sprouting |
When we got back
from our vacation, I heard a gutteral cry from behind the basement door. It turns out the oldest cat, Patches, was in
the basement. We had a neighbor house
sit and take care of the pets while we were gone, but I didn’t warn them that Patches
will sneak down to the basement to spend time.
The way this cat was complaining, I guessed she may have been there for
a few days.
Later when I checked
the framework, it turned out that the cat created a “nest” in one of the
planters closest to the window and under the grow light, so she could sun herself
uninterrupted. One of the lettuce
planters had half the lettuce pushed down, and a newly planted Swiss Chard
container had seedlings pressed into the dirt, covered with cat hairs.
Aside from that, the
other 6 planters where growing well. The
Beans were going nuts. I left with
seedlings barely breaking ground and came back to six inch plants! I underestimated the growth rate and size of
beans, and realized I need to move things around in a few weeks. The Swiss Chard planting looks like it was
recovering from the squirrels, and one container of lettuce was ready for the
first harvest. I measured that under 2
gallons of water was used during the time we were gone, leaving plenty left in
the 5 gallon pail.
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| Basement Garden 8/11 - back from vacation, Note size of bean plants |
Chuck and I arranged
time to work on the watering via eMail while on vacation. He showed up early on one of my last vacation
days to give me a hand. I had already done some some carpentry work on the
frame to support the 5 gallon water container, that’s 8.6 pounds. I found a twenty gallon tank, but I needed to
reinforce the framework to cover the additional weight. The 20 gallon reservour
would weigh 170 pounds, a significant increase for the overall frame load. Additional support would need to be in place
before I purchased the reservour.
We wheeled the
platform out of the basement, manuvered it down a two inch concrete lip to the
garage. Once we had it in the garage, we
spent only 10-15 minutes removing the containers and disassembling the major
components. We had to put it on its side
to install a 2x6 support beam under the location for the water tank, I also
added a 7th pivot wheel under the beam, allowing the extra weight to rest directly
over a ground support point.
We also reviewed my
design for watering. The upgrade would
replace tubes tied to a 1x1 rectangular wooden frame with PVC pipes arragned as
rectangles with large pre-drilled holes for the feeding pipes. The original design two rectanges with a
shared side, and 3-pipe corner PVC connectors with PVC holding it up to be over
the planters. I couldn’t feed the water
tubing through the corner pieces, so T connectors were used instead, with the
tubing going thouth the top of the T and support provided through the lower
beams. Each pipe had a T connection at
each edge. Three sides of each rectangle
was a single pipe. The water feed came through the shared side, breaking two sides
in half. All together about 30 pieces of
PVC pipe were cut. 20 of them used for support within a T connection, and under
a foot in length. Chuck couldn’t stay
long that day, but his input in the design was helpful. The work on the watering
system took much longer than expected, well into the night. I completed test drips of the new water
system. All the drips were working fine,
The new pump was driving water with regular dripping at all end-points. In a
few additional places there were small drips came from the connection between
the small feeder tubes and the larger ones.
I didn’t want to fix it immediately, but watch to see how long it
deteriorates over time.
After making
calculations, I realized that each of the drips completed two gallons per hour,
with eight drippers in the farm platform. That is 16 gallons per hour, even
though the tank is 5 gallons. That means
each our the entire water would flow through the system over three times in one
hour. Thank goodness for closed cycle watering. I run the system for 2-4 hours, twice a day.
The worked went
until late at night. After completing
the drip test, I filled the trays with the planters. I forgot about the two inch step between the
garage and basement. This wasn’t
something I could lift, but used a small piece of scrap plywood to make a
ramp. Once I got the first set of whells
up over the ridge, the rest came easy. I
didn’t even spill any water.
After putting the
framework back in place, I examined the working system. There was little planned maintenance work to be
completed at this point, I still need to fill the water tank with two gallons a few times a week. Even though the
normal New England farmers were planning for their early fall harvests, I was
now focused more on planting for a late fall and winter harvest.
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