Garden Update July 2017

July is almost over the garden is doing pretty well. I've lost a few tomato plants, but the rest have produced like crazy. I'm getting the best Roma tomatoes that I've ever gotten. I took out the beans I started with in the spring and planted new ones. And of course the peppers are doing great.

One of the many pepper plants.

I bought packets of mixed pepper seeds. It's been interesting to see what kind of peppers they grow. 

Another pepper plant.

Yet another pepper plant.

Roma tomatoes.

That sad looking brown thing was a tomato plant.

Those big leaves in the picture above are from a cucumber vine. That thing grew along the length of the bed and then climbed up a tomato plant and jumped to the next. Now if only it would produce some cucumbers.

More Romas.

I filled half of a grocery bag with tomatoes. My wife made salsa and sauce.

I have cucumber vines going all over the place, but I've only gotten a few cucumbers.

Garden Update June 2017

Things are taking off now. I've got tomatoes, beans and peppers coming in like crazy. I've also had some issues. Some of my tomato plants have not done well. Some just don't seem to be growing. Others got real big, started producing fruit, and then turned yellow and brown and died. I think I have blight in some of the beds that just hasn't gone away. We've had a lot of rain too, so there's that.

Picture of the entire garden.

The cucumber vines are all over the PVP pipe. They haven't produced yet.

I wish I had spaced things out better in this bed. The peppers are cramped but producing anyway.

This is one of the tomatoes that turned yellow.

I got a lot of purple beans.

This tomato plant is loaded. I need to give them more space next year.

Relocating my rain barrel water pump (update #2).

I had some doubts about moving my rain barrel pump to my crawlspace. I had some leaks initially, but I managed to resolved those. Now that that they are gone I'm pretty happy with the setup. The pump is barely audible inside the house.

I decided to improve things further by adding a pressure gauge. I fussed around with setting the pressure on the pump before. The gauge I used for that was attached to one of the hose bibs. I think adding a gauge closer to the pump will be better. It'll certainly be easier to make future adjustments.

I found all of the parts that I needed at Lowes.

• 0-60 psi pressure gauge (the pump is supposed to range from 30-50 psi).
• 1/2-in x 1/4-in Threaded Adapter Bushing Fitting
• 1/2-in slip x 1/2-in fpt PVC elbow (I can't find it on the web site to link to.)
• 1/2-in PVC tee

I screwed the brass bushing into the threaded side of the PVC elbow and then screwed the pressure gauge into the bushing. Then I cut and glued all of the PVC pipe and fittings to get what I have in the picture below. 

I plugged the pump back in and everything worked just as I hoped it would.

I was able to see the pump kick on when the gauge fell to 30 psi. Unfortunately it shut off just under 50 psi. I know I had it shutting off just over 50 psi previously. That was with a different gauge at a different location. I'll have to try to adjust it a little higher sometime when get a chance. For now everything seems to be working fine.

I've already used almost 300 gallons of rain water this year.

Garden Update May 2017

The garden is really taking off. It seems like I just put the plants in the ground the other day.

I thought these were bush beans. With the way they are growing they might be pole beans. That could be a problem.

These tomato plants had plenty of space when I put them in.

More tomatoes.

I stagger my seed starting, so these peppers and tomatoes are still small.

This row of peppers is really doing well. There are cucumbers in the back of this bed. I hope they get enough sun.

More tomato and pepper plants. We're gonna make salsa this summer!

Relocating my rain barrel water pump (update #1).

I had the bright idea to relocate my rain barrel pump to my crawlspace. So far it hasn't gone as planned. The washer hoses I used to make connections wouldn't seal. I had to replace one. Then I discovered that one of the fittings on my pressure tank had cracked.

I decided to redo all of the piping. The picture below is what I came up with.

I took the pipe vertical instead of horizontal. The key thing that made this possible was a 3/4" elbow with a 1/2" pipe thread outlet. This kept my drain at the bottom. I installed the pressure relief valve further up and the PEX adapter at the top.

The picture below shows it in place in my crawlspace. Initially it worked great, but after a couple of days I noticed it dripping where the PVC pipe attached to the tank. I had to pull it out and screw it down a couple more turns. I'm hoping that will solve the issue.

Below is a picture of the old piping for reference.

I got plants in the ground -- Garden 2017

It's been nice out for the last week and a half so I started putting plants in the ground.

I hung bars of Irish Spring soap from posts to keep the deer away. The brown mat in the picture below is dried out hairy vetch. I put down seed last fall but not much of it grew. I suspect that my seed is too old.

The picture below is a bed full of bush beans. I directly planted these and so far they seem to be doing well.

I still have a lot of peppers and tomatoes that need to be transplanted. They'll probably get put in this weekend.

Relocating my rain barrel water pump.

I mounted the pump for my rain barrels to the under side of my deck last year.

Then I used the pressurized water from the pump to flush a toilet. I was fairly happy with the results. The biggest downside that I had was the noise.  The pump isn't that loud really, but what sound it does make is amplified through the deck. I figured that the solution is to move it to the crawlspace.

The first step was getting the water into the crawlspace. I didn't want to buy a massive hammer drill so I ran a pipe through one of the little ventilation windows.

PVC pipe running from the barrels to the house.

PVC pipe going through the ventilation screen. Most of the pipe is buried under an inch or two of dirt.

I put hose fittings on both ends of the PVC pipe. Inside the crawlspace I included a shutoff valve. I wasn't sure that this setup was going to work. It requires the pump to pull the water from several feet away, and it has to lift it up the pipe and through the window. The pump had to lift the water in its previous position, but it was much closer to the source.

I have the pump sitting on the floor for now.  Eventually I'd like to mount it to something more permanent. I connected a garden hose to it just to verify that it would work.

The pump was able to move the water from the barrels through the hose.

The next step was to connect the pump to the PEX tubing and pressure tank. I used the old washer machine hose that I had used previously. Sadly, it had slow leaks at both ends. I put the pump on a bucket to help deal with that.

I was able to pressurize the system to 46 psi or so. The pump is supposed to shut off at 55 psi. I got on the old Internet and looked up how to adjust the shutoff switch. It took a little playing around, but eventually I got the pump to shut off  around 53 psi. That was good enough for me.

Then I unplugged the pump, shut off the supply line, and drained the pressurized side. I need to get new washers for my supply hoses before hooking it up again. I can't have water leaking in my crawlspace.