Garden irrigation - root vegetable watering trial

Irrigation gives 46% weight increase

It's now 22nd June and the root vegetable trial has been running since sowing seeds on April 12th. Although it has been a pretty dry spring there have been occasional showers, lower than average temperatures and soil moisture has generally been okay. The last few days have been much warmer and quite windy so the soil is now drying quickly. Watering was started when the seeds were sown. Each irrigated row has its own seep hose line. There are 5 watered rows. Each is connected to a WaterWand Heliomatic 130 pump in rotation, so they are watered one day in five.

All the vegetables in the trial have been grown under fleece and only uncovered for weeding and occasional photos. This keeps them a little warmer but more importantly keeps carrot root fly at bay. The plots have been hand weeded twice, but weed growth has been quite modest.

The top picture shows the irrigated plot today, the second the unwatered plot. Both plots continue to look good but there is clearly more growth where watered.
The third image compares plants from irrigated (left) and control plots.

The combined weight of the unwatered roots
is 65g, watered 95g. This represents a difference of 46% though the sample size is too small to draw any conclusions.

The WaterWand Heliomatic 130 is a small scale, fully automatic, solar powered garden irrigation pump designed to use stored rainwater from butts or tanks.

Garden irrigation - root vegetable irrigation trial

Root vegetable irrigation trial update 14th May 2010

On 14th May the root vegetable plants had grown enough to be seen and so had the weeds. The fleece was removed and plots weeded, pulling weeds by hand within the seedling rows but hoeing them off (with the edge of a trowel) between the rows.

Germination in both plots was pretty good with relatively few "slug gaps" where slugs have grazed off the seedlings.

Since sowing in April the weather has been much cooler than normal and probably drier too. The irrigated rows have been watered on a five day rotation, in the photos the row being watered is easily visible. The irrigated plants are noticeably more advanced than the unirrigated, which can also be seen in the photos.

My very first blog

A quick intro.

I refer to myself online as Solar gardener. This is because over the last 3 years I have developed a range of irrigation kits which use solar power to automatically irrigate plants with rainwater. They are called WaterWands and you can see them at www.rainwatergardening.com.

As a part of the development program I have built a research garden in which to test out ideas and equipment in a garden like setting.

The objectives of the blog are: -

• To inform anyone who is interested what is happening in the research garden.
• To pick as many brains as possible when I don't know what I am doing.
• To find out about garden watering problems that don't occur in my garden.
  
• To get to know you, who knows, one day you might buy one of my products (some gardeners already have!)

What will you see if you follow this blog?

The research garden includes extensive rainwater storing raised beds, kitchen garden, container (pot) gardens, greenhouse, hanging baskets, tree establishment trials and more.

I will also be developing and testing new kit - see it here first!

I will also report on interesting projects which WaterWand is involved in such as the new "One planet food project" at Occombe Farm near Paignton in Devon.

There is also WaterWand Australia and from time to time I will let you know what is happening there.

Help me please

• To keep my blog interesting and relevant
• Feel free to comment on style and format - this is my first attempt.
• Ask questions and give answers.
• Not to talk to myself - if you find this useful, interesting, or otherwise entertaining, tell your friends.

Talk to you soon.