DerHusker
Babbling Farker
This weekend I decided to put in an herb and vegetable garden again. I’ve been lazy the last 2 years and didn’t plant anything in the garden. One of the reasons why I didn’t was we had an irrigation valve go bad. We had to turn the backyard irrigation water off most of the time or the sprinklers would come on by themselves.
I needed to replace it but I was really dreading doing this due to how much work it was (I had to completely dig up the valve box like I was starting over) replacing a valve servicing my hill, downhill lawn, garden and fruit trees. You see when we expanded our patio I had to also expand our yard.
Here it is before the new concrete was poured.
In the pictures above you can see my expanded patio was occupying most of what used to be my original yard. So to expand our yard I had to also put in a retaining wall. (A few pics of that)
1st course.
Drainage pipe and rock to control expansion.
Due to all this I had to completely redo all the irrigation, so I decided to put in underground valves in valve boxes. (A few pics of that)
Underground valves / manifold connecting to lawn sprinklers and drip irrigation for planters.
Valve box being positioned.
Lids on and waiting to have soil filled in around them.
Here it is once most everything was finished except putting in the fountain, the plants and the rock ground cover.
And here it is after the fountain, the plants and the rock ground cover were done.
Here you can see why I didn’t want to have to dig them up.
Well I finally decided to fix it. Here’s the valves as they looked before I fixed them. (The valve on left is the bad one)
As it turned out I didn’t have to dig everything up (thanks to a pry bar) but it still took around 90 minutes to complete. (The new valve was like 1/8” longer than the old one)
Now that I can water everything via the time-clock controller again I started out with some herbs, (From left to right is Sweet mint, sweet basil, chives, lemon thyme and sage)
peppers and tomatoes.
The peppers were a variety pack.
I started out by planting the herbs in pots.
I divided the basil and chives into 3 different pots so I can rotate them inside the house and outside the house.
Here are one of the basil's, one of the chives and the thyme in our kitchen garden window.
I planted the peppers in 3 half wine barrel planters.
Serrano and Jalapeno.
Anaheim & Cayenne
And the hot stuff - Habanero & Bhut Jolokia
These are all up the hill on our side yard where I’ve already planted some larger tomatoes.
I planted the sage and the smaller tomatoes in my downhill garden beds. Here’s a picture of the overall downhill garden.
Sage.
This is some Oregano that comes back every year. (Since 2013)
Big Boy Tomatoes.
The Waaaiiting is the Hardest Part!
Thank for looking.
I needed to replace it but I was really dreading doing this due to how much work it was (I had to completely dig up the valve box like I was starting over) replacing a valve servicing my hill, downhill lawn, garden and fruit trees. You see when we expanded our patio I had to also expand our yard.
Here it is before the new concrete was poured.
In the pictures above you can see my expanded patio was occupying most of what used to be my original yard. So to expand our yard I had to also put in a retaining wall. (A few pics of that)
1st course.
Drainage pipe and rock to control expansion.
Due to all this I had to completely redo all the irrigation, so I decided to put in underground valves in valve boxes. (A few pics of that)
Underground valves / manifold connecting to lawn sprinklers and drip irrigation for planters.
Valve box being positioned.
Lids on and waiting to have soil filled in around them.
Here it is once most everything was finished except putting in the fountain, the plants and the rock ground cover.
And here it is after the fountain, the plants and the rock ground cover were done.
Here you can see why I didn’t want to have to dig them up.
Well I finally decided to fix it. Here’s the valves as they looked before I fixed them. (The valve on left is the bad one)
As it turned out I didn’t have to dig everything up (thanks to a pry bar) but it still took around 90 minutes to complete. (The new valve was like 1/8” longer than the old one)
Now that I can water everything via the time-clock controller again I started out with some herbs, (From left to right is Sweet mint, sweet basil, chives, lemon thyme and sage)
peppers and tomatoes.
The peppers were a variety pack.
I started out by planting the herbs in pots.
I divided the basil and chives into 3 different pots so I can rotate them inside the house and outside the house.
Here are one of the basil's, one of the chives and the thyme in our kitchen garden window.
I planted the peppers in 3 half wine barrel planters.
Serrano and Jalapeno.
Anaheim & Cayenne
And the hot stuff - Habanero & Bhut Jolokia
These are all up the hill on our side yard where I’ve already planted some larger tomatoes.
I planted the sage and the smaller tomatoes in my downhill garden beds. Here’s a picture of the overall downhill garden.
Sage.
This is some Oregano that comes back every year. (Since 2013)
Big Boy Tomatoes.
The Waaaiiting is the Hardest Part!
Thank for looking.
