WATERING ALL THE BAMBOO AND BY THE POLE BARN

Friday and Saturday were spent installing 1" Schedule 40 PVC behind the bamboo, these are fed by a new manifold at the sprinkler pump that allows the full pump output to be delivered to any of four areas. Now we can get adequate pressure in each of the four areas to really deliver some water.

Zone 1 = South gate pipeline

Zone 2 = Paradise Beach area bananas and Palm Island

Zone 3 = ALL THE BAMBOO on Bamboo Beach

Zone 4 = Food Forest and Polebarn areas.

I've been experimenting with Rainbird impact type sprinklers that I've seen used at commercial nurseries. A single impact sprinkler now waters the entire banana field at the south end of the big pond.

A pair of impact sprinklers are watering the Food Forest area.

A single metal impact sprinkler is watering all the plants by the pole barn.

The sprinklers watering the Bamboo are popup lawn sprinklers that we buy at Home Depot. These have a gear drive mechanism inside and they don't require as much water as the impact sprinklers do. Seven of these are on the Bamboo zone and all run at once delivering very targeted watering to the bamboo.

Melnor yard spinklers and garden hoses are a thing of the past in the bamboo area, I'm sure the lawn guys are going to be happy about this.

TEMPORARY HOSE BRIDGE
To get the water back to the pole barn I tried to keep it out of sight. There are many trees lining the route and this makes it impossible to dig down to bury an irrigation pipe.

To connect the source to the Pole Barn requires a single 50' length of garden hose. This will be replaced in the near future and we'll post pictures when it's complete.

HOW WE WATER THE LAWN HERE ON THE FARM

This 1.5 horsepower Wayne irrigation pump draws water from the pond through a stiff 1" flexible reinforced hose which is terminated at the water end with a "well foot valve and strainer".

The foot valve opens when the pump sucks and closes when the pump is off, this keeps the intake hose primed between uses.

The pump output feeds a quad manifold of garden hose outlets, three are terminated by Melbor oscillating sprinklers and the fourth output drives a pressure meter so the PSI output of the pump can be read when it's in service.

Traveller Palm Seeds - Planted Saturday 5/21

I bought some traveller palm seeds online from Australia, and Mark and I put them in a high humidity germinating machine on a heating mat. I've read that the germination time is anywhere from 2 weeks to 18 months, so we're not sure what to expect, but we'll see how it goes. It would be amazing to have more traveller palms throughout P2 to go with our gorgeous traveller palm.

Some other updates from this weekend:

• Mark invented a better watering system with a high powered pump pulling water from the pond and going to the new plantings.
• We got 50 St. Augustine sod pieces to rebuild the grass in front of the pond by the house. It looks so plush and the ibis love it. We watered for hours today, and it was so fun to watch the ibis bathing in the showers.
• I planted the rest of the Awapuhi rhizomes around the perimeter and in the island by the house. The early batch of Awapuhi stalks has come up, strong and healthy after the last few rains. Now the 2nd batch should be up in a few weeks, and the stunning red Awapuhi flowers shortly behind.
• Saw our first raccoon babies about 30 minutes ago! A litter of 3 kits made their way down the oak tree while mom ate at the buffet. Three little cuties with the tiniest tails barely 3 stripes on the tails. Awwwwww! This mom was not "Eight", the mom we see every day (eight because her tail has an amazing eight stripes). So eight still has babies up in the tree somewhere.