Beans and Water

The middle of August is not usually the time to start planting. Most people are probably slowing down and just putting their garden to rest. I decided to keep things going. This is especially true because I hired to young men from church to help clean things up and (eventually) process the new horse manure I got.

I had them clean out one of the beds in which I had raised onions and garlic. It had gone to weed mostly. They brought in 8 loads of manure using the small barrow. It filled the bed to the brim. All that was left of me was to use the garden fork to turn it, fertilize, plant and water. (More about water in a moment.) I planted blue lake beans, 4 per square foot yesterday morning.

I had actually found enough ambition prior to their help to clean out the other onion bed by myself and plant Lima beans. The Limas have now sprouted. About 90% came up. Of these, I lost another 2-3% to animals taking off the first leaves. They seem to be growing well. I planted Limas at this time another year and had a fine harvest. Since I will probably be eating them by myself, there will surely be enough. I have more seed, but don't feel the need to fill out the bed.

Now about the water. When i was watering the blue lake bean bed, I sensed that, once again, I was not getting the water pressure I expected. I've had this happen before and found that it was the nozzle I was using that seemed to be the problem. I took off the nozzle and got a little better result, but it made me curious about whether or not there was something else going on.

I went to the place where the hoses all meet. In the past, I found a bit of blockage where the hoses meet the Y connector. I disconnected the hose that ran from the connector to the garden so I could see what was coming out and systematically eliminated all hoses but one and opened up that one's line and let the water run. When I did this, the water that came out of each was initially pretty dark with junk. Probably some sort of algae.


Here's what I think. The junk doesn't wash away because the water pressure is too stable and the flow is too slow when I turn on the hose. After all, there are 8 barrels feeding the one hose and the size of the connectors and size of the nozzle reduce what can go through the system at any given moment. So, algae start to grow in the hoses. The water pressure is probably even lessened a bit because there is junk growing in the hoses.

When this will become a potential real problem will be when (if ever) I finally get a slow drip system installed in the garden. Then the water will flow evenly, but slowly and junk will grow.

In the short run, one solution might be to cut off all but one or two barrels and just take water from those barrels. The water would flow faster through those hoses when they were in use. And, when the entire system was opened back up, the pressure of the backwash as the barrels filled back up again may help further clean out the hoses. Overall pressure during the partial shut down might be a little less, but I can live with that. I may only need to do this periodically as preventive maintenance. The other solution is to pour chlorine bleach into the system to kill the algae. Not a good idea. If the water in the hoses is as stagnant as I think the chlorine might not get where it was needed and there are doubtless environmental impacts I would rather not have.