Due to complaints from my other half on the time spent watering the garden we have now tried two ideas. One is a raised bed with clay jars suspended in the soil......an ancient technique which slowly disperses water and you dont waste water with surface evaporation........seems to be working well. Obviously if you are establishing seedlings then you will have to water from the top for a while. Purchased some clay vases for about 380 pesos and had to sand off the glaze which would prevent the transfer off the water. The vase has a lid and is just slightly above the top of the soil and is topped up each morning. So far seems to be working well but the water doesnt seem to spread out more than 20cm from the edge. So I have tried a "wicking bed" our raised beds are made of rock so the bottom was lined with sand andplastic sheeting taken up the sides to about 250mm then filled with gravel. Some Agi or soil drainage pipe was laid at the bottom with an outlet and elbow to outside the bed to make sure the wicking bed wasnt overfilled, A filler pipe was made from 65mm plastic pipe and rested on the top of the gravel Then geotextile fabric was laid on the top of the gravel and the bed filled to a depth of 300mm. Seems to be working well Tons of pictures and diagrams on Google Now I do have a mate who grows tomatoes here in a commercial way and he uses a plastic mulch and drip irrigation with great success but i thought I would try this as I have heard you can have lots of problems with drainage systems blocking up etc. We are also buying coconut husks at 16 peso a rice sack for mulching BUT it takes a long time and hiring an extra worker for a couple of days to chop the things up to a workable size....so if anybody has any ideas how we could speed the process up I would be greatful. I have used my mulcher but it just creates a coconut fairy floss which jams the mulcher up frequently. cheers Ricbak
ricardo... i've tried various mulches and settled on rice husks. they are relatively inexpensive, clean, light weight and easy to find. i like peanut shells better but my source ran out and i haven't been able to find another source in the duma area. this might help you: Where to Find: - Does anyone know where rice hulls can be purchased? | Page 2 | Dumaguete Info
