
Irrigation Improvement
In our home garden, we have 8 raised beds inside a white picket fence. We were concerned about wasting too much water with the soaker hoses resting on top of the beds like in the picture below.
So, we purchased some 90º hose elbows and some hose repair kits. We cut up some old hoses and made these things.
Then we cut up old soaker hoses and using additional hose repair kits made one soaker hose for each bed. We attached the above pieces to the soaker hoses.
Finally, we made additional short hoses using more repair kits and fed them through PVC pipe before attaching them to the pieces. We dug a trench to bury the PVC.
That was last year. We have had to tighten up some of the hose clamps but for the most part, the system is working.
Vertical Space
This year we built some arches to give us more vertical growing space. We took some old PVC conduit and cut three 15′ sections.
Next, we cut some wire fencing and zip tied it to the pvc pieces.We hammered these 6 rebar stakes into the raised beds – 3 in each bed.
We slipped the ends of the PVC with the attached fencing over the 6 stakes.
Below are some pictures of the progress the watermelon and cantaloupe have made climbing over the new arches.