Watering and irrigation planning

Keeping plants watered, not too wet, not too dry, when it rains, or not rain, without spending the whole day holding a hose - for as long as I have been gardening, watering has been a constant endevour.

Previously, I had some elaborate systems and have tried may different solutions including pressure irrigation, trip irrigation, and just plain watering. All of the methods have its place.

In Down End Road garden, there is currently approx 2000 liters of rain water harvested at two different stations. The plan is to another 1000 liter harvesting towards the front garden. Watering from the tanks with watering cans is not too much trouble, although some watering with the hose still comes into play.

In the greenhouse all trays have pumped watering from tanks into the drip trays. This works well as long as I dont forget to do it. The coldframes and growing boxes also have drip irrigation installed.

For the 2024 season, my watering and irrigation challenges include:

• watering the edible pots, of which I am planning quite a few.

• watering while I am in Australia. (houseplants, seedlings, outside pots if rain is scarse.)

• moving the water butts at the greenhouse, increasing diameter of the connector pipes to improve the water leveling of the buts. This will go hand in hand with building the new greenhouse.

• new waterbut installation to harvest front roof water.

I also want to spend more time to get a better grip on watering needs and believe I can achieve this by improving water monitoring methods. I am thinking of deploying the latest technology of monitors in pots and it key parts of the garden. The technology is advancing very rapidly