Vacation Gardening

some of you may have had the wuestion come to mind that "Hey doesn't this guy garden? How the heck do you take a three week leave and hope to come back to anything but dirt and crispy leaves?" Well, you set up a drip irrigation system and hope for the best. This is the first time that I have tried this. Not setting up drip irrigation, I have done that before on a very limited scale, but doing it to this level and then leaving it unattended. I set up a system that would use small micro sprinkler heads to essentially flood the small raised beds, as well as the garden landscaping at the back of my yard.

I ran two 1/4 inch lines down the length of each bed and made three drops on each line. The sprayers aren't actually like sprinklers in that they do not vaporize the water when they spray it into the air. The small sprinkler heads only spray about 10-12 inches out from the head in a stream. The point tof the heads is to put a large amount of water into the ground for the plants to pull up through capillary action. When I first put the system in place and tested it, I didn't think it was working. I would look at the beds and all I saw was small wet areas where the streams landed. When I took a handful of soil up and looked at the bottom, I found that the the bottom two inches of the beds were very wet. the roots of the plants will theoretically be drawn down and get to the water which should be much better for them in the heat of summer.

As for the back gardens they are primarily decorative, but I am starting to work in some edibles over time; raspberries, corn and artichokes have been added so far. I ran a single line of 5/8 hose down the center of the bed, and connected essentially the same type of heads along the length of it to allow the bed to be flodded right next to the plants that I have in place. I had actually noticed that my strawberries did much better the couple of weeks before I left than they had prior to hooking up the system.

I can only assume that the system is working and have faith that my neighbors will notice if the plants are dying and water them while they are enjoying the vacancy harvest that I invited them to enjoy. Have any of you had any experience with long term vacationon gardening? Let me know, What do you think my chances are of coming home to healthy veggie?
P~