- The day is finally here.
We have irrigation fully set up
for 15 zones here at the homestead.
So what I wanna do is really quickly show you
what it looked like when we were trenching all this out
and setting up every single zone.
So here in the front yard,
this is all one zone.
Every raised bed here in the front yard is one zone
and we've done a couple different irrigation preparations
which we will do an absolute full nitty-gritty guide on,
but for a round bed,
for example, we just have an on off valve.
We have a Mister for direct sewing
and then we have drip tubing
and then for this incredible bed here,
actually you can really see how much has exploded
as a result of being on a regular watering schedule.
But this one is just drip tape
and I think we've done this before.
Just a quick note on watering schedule.
So what I was doing is I was doing every single day 5 a.m
and 1 p.m for 10 minutes.
I've since switched to Monday, Wednesday, Friday
for 20 minutes at 5 a.m.
So in the morning, the plants can absorb all the water
that they need for the day
and it should last them throughout the day
that actually on the net
produces a little bit less water output to the beds,
but they seem to be performing even better because of that.
I may have been slightly overwatering them
but what we need to do now is set up yet another zone.
We planted the tomatoes in a recent video.
Let's head on back.
I think Jacques' cooking something up.
First off, check out these Holly Hocks.
We finally succeeded growing them
to enormous heights and they look really pretty.
Nevertheless, we have these tomatoes here,
the hermit's here.
The hermit's here, - Time to get serious.
- He's time. - (man laughing)
- It's time to get serious guys. You know how we do.
And when we say serious,
we mean not serious at all. - (man laughing)
- So what we have here are some selections
from the many many hundreds of feet
at this point of fittings and drip tubings
that we've accumulated over the years here.
- We've got a few boxes.
- Yes. So what we need to do Jacque is we have zone eight
is the back area in the in-ground bed section.
- Right, so all these in-ground beds, right?
- Every in-ground bed is on zone eight.
There's one plump up for zone eight.
There's another one over there.
We'll do the front square beds at some other time.
We just put these tomatoes in.
We need them on irrigation and we will likely need 'em
on a trellising system, but irrigation first.
So what's our play here?
- So right now, since they're all on like a solenoid,
this is empty from water.
So we could just take off the cap,
cut it to height and install the first fitting.
So that's gonna be elbow to pressure regulator
to adapter that lets you attach this tubing.
- So what we need to do is,
I don't want to cut it super low.
I might just go to here just
so I have a little room to play with.
- I guess the only downside
is then the the tubing is gonna carry down.
- I'm okay with that for now. - We can always get closer.
- We can always cut it off. - That's true.
- A little bit later.
- Okay.
- So we're here. We'll come to here maybe.
- Sure.
And I actually really like this pipe cutter
once I figured out how to use it.
- It just slowly - It ratchets.
- Ratchets down
- But that's a clean cut.
- I'm gonna actually leave this here
so we know it's zone eight still.
- Okay. Oh, that's a half inch or a three quarter inch.
- Do we have this? - Okay, we do.
- I'll be right back. - Okay, cool.
- (Jacques laughing) - We're missing one piece
but we have the piece.
Basically you need,
whenever you're doing an irrigation system
to a main line from PVC,
you need some sort of piece that's taking it off the PVC
and putting it into the standard mainline system
and we just undershot this by one measurement.
We need to go up just a little bit more
but basically we're gonna screw it in here.
We're regulating the pressure.
Although, on the system we designed,
the pressure is actually regulated
at the solenoid for the zone.
There's a pressure regular right there
but we're just being extra safe here
and making sure that it's rated for the drip line
'cause we don't wanna blow the caps off and it can happen.
It actually happened last summer
when we put a very rudimentary drip system in here,
but it's gonna be really important
to be putting this drip system in
because every city in California
except for San Diego's under drought restrictions right now,
it might be coming to our city soon
and drip is by far the most efficient way to water a garden
especially at the scale that we're working with.
So while Jacque drags that out,
I'm just gonna kind of mess around
with some of these fittings.
Okay. So this is the one that we we have now
we're just gonna screw in this side.
Whoop! We can always pop on the glue a little bit later,
but there you go
so that's good.
And now we just need to connect the main line.
Slide that in there.
- It's actually, I've had this out in the sun now
for a couple hours which makes it a lot easier to work with.
- If you're really struggling,
you actually can put it in a vat of hot water
and it will make it way more pliable.
Okay, so now we have a pressure regulated mainline.
So all we need to do is we need to basically take a tee.
We're gonna split one up here, go down the tomato bed
and we're at the very least gonna set up
the split over there.
I don't think we're gonna run the drip tape out there.
We don't have anything in this water in there
but now what we need to do Jacque is cut right about here.
- So do you want to angle - Snap a tea
- And then like elbow it
or do you wanna just kind of bend it like that?
I think for now we'll bend it.
We can always redo it a little bit later.
- Okay, perfect.
(upbeat music)
This T-connector guys eventually this comes down,
angles at the onion bed and runs drip out
but we just don't need it right now.
We've got our Irritec light drip line here
which looks like the emitters,
I think they're every six
- Should be six inches. - Every six
and I think last summer when we did this big tomato bed,
we did I believe - Six
- Six inches?
- Yeah. I was gonna say, oh the emitter spacing?
- No, the spacing between lines.
It was a little more than six. Was it every 12?
- Probably like 12.
- Okay. Why don't we do every 12?
- 'Cause I know we could do one to left to the tomatoes.
One to the right.
At least one in the middle
and then probably two on the other row tomatoes.
- So I think we go, I think we go
on the outside of each row tomatoes,
on the inside of each row tomatoes and one in the middle.
That's probably fine, right?
So what I'll do
is I try to cut in the middle between two emitters
so I'm not jamming this into an actual emitter
which makes it a little bit less sturdy
and a little bit more likely to bust off.
- And if we want to, we could also
bury this entirely in the mulch and save even more water.
- Right.
That's something we'll probably end up doing
as summer comes in is throwing
another bag of garden straw actually burying this.
Buried drip is something that most farmers
are using these days.
- Yeah, the hard part for drip
is getting all the parts you need (laughs)
and then finding them all.
So once you have everything ready,
it's really not that hard to install.
- Yeah, this is quick.
This is like 10-minute job.
Assuming you've already laid your parts out
and you know what you're doing?
- I'm putting a stake next to each one
to just keep it from pulling in.
- Yeah, I'm staking mine as well.
All right. We have this set up.
Let's turn zone eight on
and see if we actually get water.
- Before we pressure test this,
we are gonna want to glue it up
so I'm gonna use some purple primer.
This isn't necessary
but it just makes it a lot easier to slide PVC on.
So I'm gonna prime this one,
prime the interior here a little bit
and then we're gonna get our glue, our PVC glue.
Take a little bit of that.
This is a fast setting glue
so it should be able to hold pressure within 30 minutes.
Get it on the inside and out
and then when you put it on,
you wanna just twist it a little bit
so you make sure that it really gets on there
and then hold it down for 30 seconds
and you should be good to go.
- So here we are in the electrical systems of the homestead.
This is of course the solar,
but over here we have the hydrawise system from hunter
which is really the brain that controls the entire thing.
So you can do this on the phone,
but really quickly I just want to access it.
One tap on, click zones,
we'll go to zone eight
and we'll just do a manual run for 10 minutes.
So I'm just gonna put in one zero, we'll click okay.
I heard a little click.
Let's go on over to the tomatoes.
I hear the hiss of a good system.
- It's a beautiful sound.
So here's what you want to do.
As soon as you run it,
you wanna make sure nothing pops off, the pressure's good.
I hear nothing now,
which means that it's pressurized and it's actually running
and as I look, I can start to see water is dripping out
and this is actually kind of a good time to like,
if you want to.
- Right because they're nice and rigid.
- How I am to come through
and straighten the lines a little bit.
Make sure everything is,
I mean really it does make a difference man
'cause like this is now six inches away
and that one's three inches away.
- Totally.
- So it's a small thing
but I think it's probably worth changing.
So what I can do now is set these tomatoes up.
I'm thinking tomatoes, deep infrequent watering.
We could set zone eight up
on twice a week for 30 minutes, twice a week for an hour.
I'm not quite sure on the timing there
but now we know these tommy boys
are going to get the water that they need.
So that's never gonna be a reason we kill these plants.
The next reason we might kill them is
because there's not a good support structure.
So on another video we will be putting together
the second year version of the tomato support.
I think what we're doing
is probably just a big Florida weave.
- It's the easiest way to go.
- Easiest way to go, less effort
and I'm kind of about less effort in the garden this year.
So that's what the irrigation system guys.
There's gonna be a full tour
on exactly how we do it all the way down
to the software level at some point in the future
but quite honestly, we just need to put up more zones.
We just got this back one in, very excited about that.
Stay tuned, good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
- Forgot we were both walking off (laughs)