This weekend we will be finishing the setup of the watering system in the greenhouse and into the raised beds. We will be going out of town on Thursday and not return until Sunday so we absolutely have to have the drip system set up by then or the plants are definitely going to die. They cannot go more than 24 hours without drying up and there will be nothing left of them after 3 days of heat.
So tomorrow morning we will be off to the home improvement store to buy new couplings for the hoses that connect the pump to the watering system already set up around the farm. These caused us some frustration when we last worked on everything because the old couplings that were in place no longer lock firmly together and seal, causing us to have leaks at each connection. We think that a black plastic fitting inside the couplers are actually the problem so we hope we can just buy those tomorrow. If not, we’ll be buy new couplings just to take out the washers. But you gotta do what you gotta do.
We will also buy a few additional pieces of piping and angles so that we have two faucets in the backyard. One will be connected to our Gardena controller which will trigger waterings over the course of the day in our raised beds and greenhouse. And the second will have a water hose attached so we can water the rest of the plants in the garden off of the well.
Another project we have on our list is re-potting everything in the greenhouse. All the plants have exploded in growth and we need to get them in larger pots if we want them to continue growing. So we will hopefully find some suitable pots at the home improvement store as well that don’t cost a fortune.
In addition to all this, we also want to buy some bird netting to cover the grapes growing up the front of our barn. We have a lot of fruit on there right now and the birds are definitely going to try to eat everything as they did last year. We’d love to try to do at least a bottle of our own wine if possible. You need 25 kilos of grapes to make 10 lites of wine. A coworker of Stefan’s has already promised us a wine maker set that she bought some time ago and never uses. All we need to do is go pick it up. We can even have it for free if we’re willing to share a few bottles of wine with them which seems like a very fair price to us.
And if that isn’t enough to get us through the weekend, we also will be trying to make another large dent on the weeds growing in the garden. This will probably have to wet until Sunday morning though because it will be very hot otherwise. We have quite a bit of brennessel growing back there which is somewhat like poison ivy or oak but it doesn’t leave the blisters. It just stings like crazy for days, feeling similar to someone driving little nails into your arm. Fun stuff, I tell ya. With that back there we ideally will be wearing gloves and pants when we start removing that. But if it’s close to 90 degrees outside that’s going to be very unpleasant. It’s also supposed to rain a bit on Saturday night so perhaps Stefan will start turning the raised beds to kill off some of the weeds now growing in them while I start on the weeds in the rest of the garden.
Needless to say we have a few things on the agenda but I think we should be able to get most of it accomplished…assuming the bed isn’t overly comfortable in the morning. Of course the dog doesn’t let us sleep past 8am anyway so at least there is no chance of the days being totally wasted. 😉
