A month into the garden

We've been crazy busy getting the garden in – spring came early, and we haven't had a frost in weeks.

Nearly all of the tender plants have been set out, the bush beans are just up, and my watering system (known as Aunt Flo) is working, and wonderful. What it isn't, is beautiful. I figure we can work on that next year. And C. is planning to plant some vines on it to shield it from UV rays, and soften its ugly.

Here is the manifold, Aunt Flo's brain. Ignore the draped pipes and baskets of parts – I'll put those away as soon as I get every little plant on a dripper.

The white pipe and valves are all recycled from my last failed attempt at a watering system, an unglued PVC setup from the University of Utah. On our rough slope, the lines cracked on the rocks and fittings popped apart even after I glued them. It was a mess.

They do work in their new configuration as a manifold, though, sending water off to eight different zones on three-quarter- and half-inch poly pipe. I have patched together parts collected over the last 30 years: all five sizes of half-inch pipe (that is not a joke) in three colors, three sizes of soaker hose, skinny quarter-inch line and plug-in emitters, and my recent purchase of 1,000 feet of drip tape.

It is a crazy quilt of watery goodness. Now C. can say, "The beans look dry – put Aunt Flo on the yellow line," and we have water on the beans, without dragging the hose around. All it took was $300 in new bits and a month of my (slow) labor. It's not quite complete, but it works. That is monumental. We'll make it a little better every year. I'll be looking for parts at estate and farm sales! And I might take some old garden hoses and drill holes in them to get water on the sun chokes for now. Yes, I am proud of finally getting a working system in, and embarrassed that it took so many years. And so much money!

So we've got the garden mostly in, and mostly watered. Next we need to get mulch on everything.

Here are the tomatoes, some on old ladders and some with stakes. We grow the indeterminate kind that get HUGE, so they need to be tied up to stakes or to sticks running between the ladders.

Here is our little field-corn patch.

And here are the guineas in the chunnel.