4 posts tagged “lawn”

This my friends is the new border I have created. If you want to know what it looked like before, then all you have to do is look at the other side... small, narrow and completely uninteresting. What I did is shape it as you see in the picture above, and stuffed it with petunias, probably 80 or so which I bought in four colours: white, red, purple and pink, and laid them out in a design which I hope to show you in a few weeks time. I've even got a white petunia in the jar in the middle, and the reason will (hopefully) be apparent when I post follow-up pictures.

Apart from the petunias, I've got tall grass which I placed at the apexes of the curves to provide backdrop.

Of course, I had to redo the complete drip system as well as move the sprinklers a bit inside. Unfortunately I have had ot cancel one which was right in the centre in front of the jar, but I'm sure it's not necessary as that patch is now serviced by 10 sprinklers so I should still get good coverage.

I've also planted some yellow and orange marigolds in other flower beds, but offset them with the shocking red and purple petunias. I hope the effect will look okay, if not, then I'll yank them out and put a different variety.. it's still very early in the season to do this!

That was a slog... why do people just don't believe you when you tell them that there is something wrong, and then look at you like a moron? Don't you just want to bash their stupid mug in?

I called the guy who installed the full irrigation system in my garden and told him specifically that the problem I'm experiencing in the garden is due to the water finishing far too quick, much quicker than before. I have a huge water tank especially installed together with two pumps exclusively for the garden. The water tank's capacity is 2,500 liters so it should be more than enough to water the garden, but it wasn't lasting for more than 5 or 6 minutes (I kid you not!) and it would stop.

That sent me 'round the bend, something really drastic was happening here, and after even cursory examination I found that the problem is most probably because whenever the timer switched on the pump to water any sprinkler zone in the garden, the drip system comes on as well! Apart from the fact that that was destroying the flower beds' plants as they are receiving much more water than they bargained for (my timing is set for watering each garden zone twice a day, each zone is split into two sectors, and each sector receives 10 minutes of watering; the drip system itself is on twice a day as well for 10 minutes each and my watering regime is only at night and very early in the morning (before the sun comes up)) 50 minutes! The ground was turning a sick shade of green with all the mould and algae...

Anyway, I call the guy and he opens up the inspection hatch and I hear an "aha!" I thought: brilliant! the bastard already found the problem! And he did, he said that the valve was stuck in the open position all the time. YES! He closed it and said that should fix the problem and was about to go on his merry way. Hold on a minute, I'm not done with you yet! What if it happens again? Why did it happen in the first place? How do I fix it if it does recurr? "Don't worry sir, it won't happen again."

Yeah sure... off he goes with my thanks.

The next day it got stuck once again and I called him back immediately. I make sure that I am right there to monitor what they're doing. This time, I told him to disassemble the valve and see exactly what the hell is going on. No questions. So he reluctantly did... and found a spring that was making the valve stuck open! That spring was exercised a bit and the internals cleaned, and finally it only came on when commanded at the proper time.

Now I can finally set the proper timing to water the lawn, and I did after much trial and error (this is actually where my phone, the Sony Ericsson K750i came into its own as it had a stopwatch for me to time the operation!) I got the water tank to pump enough water into two sectors before finishing, and allow enough time between waterings for the tank to refill from the measly pressure we get from the government line.

Maybe now I can really start correcting that drought period of a couple of weeks that wreaked havoc on my lawn, I've got great big brown patches to rectify now... it will take some work, but I'm up for it.

I'll call the garden plumber to come and replace the value tomorrow and hope that it will fix the problem. It's been driving me crazy... my lush lawn is ugly and patchy now and it will take the best part of a month or more to recover fully.