bbfamilyfarm
Newly Registered
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Feb 25, 2014 4:47 pm
Location: Denton, TX

B&B Family Farm - Our first garden

Welcome! We plan to use this space to blog about our first time experience with traditional gardening. (Ok, so we've both had small gardens, but nothing like this.)

Check out our introduction for the basics about us and our goal! https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/vi ... 31&t=56751

I'm just going to jump right in!

This is our garden as it stands today

Image

Image

This weekend I plan on testing the throw distance of our sprinkler heads so I can design an efficient system to manage our garden.

Here are the preliminary drawings of our garden.

Image

Image

Next week we'll be renting a tiller and begin the process of sowing our cold weather seeds. Brinti is working on plotting our plants. I should have details next week.

My first automation task is the watering system. As it was, the previous gardner spent several hours per day watering his garden. I'll have videos of his process after this weekend.

These valves will be an essential part of our system:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009ZC ... UTF8&psc=1

I haven't tested them yet, so I'm not recommending anyone try to purchase these. We're on a tight budget and these were the most affordable option. They're being shipped form China so I won't see them until late March or early April.

I chose these valves because in my future system, two way distribution is key for my closed loop watering matrix.

That's it for today. I'll be back!

User avatar
rainbowgardener
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 25279
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
Location: TN/GA 7b

Sounds interesting, where are you located? It really helps if you change your profile so your location shows under your screen name. There are no garden discussions you can have without reference to climate.

bbfamilyfarm
Newly Registered
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Feb 25, 2014 4:47 pm
Location: Denton, TX

I think I put our location in our intro, but I took your suggestion and fixed the location for our profile.

To answer your question though, we are in Denton, TX.

erins327
Senior Member
Posts: 209
Joined: Mon Apr 30, 2012 10:21 am
Location: Houston, TX

Hello!

Fellow Texan here, (Austin) and will be watching out for your progress!

We don't have quite the backyard you do, but want to broaden our garden from the traditional raised beds we have now, about 100 sq feet of them.

I used to do environmental and water quality testing on Clear Creek up in your area. Beautiful little river (in some places) and the land seems really viable up there. Good luck!

bbfamilyfarm
Newly Registered
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Feb 25, 2014 4:47 pm
Location: Denton, TX

A small ice storm came last week so not much happened in the garden.

We measured the garden to find it is actually 60' x 50'. Until I can get out there and test the throw distance I won't be able to finish this design.

Image

(Note: We just switched domains so all my previously posted image links are broken. I'm working on fixing that.)

Britni finalized our garden layout and I was able to make some adjustments to our rows.


Here's a PDF of our garden layout. https://www.bnbfamilyfarm.com/wp-content ... -print.pdf

The ball valves I ordered came a month early and I couldn't be happier. I had planned on using a particular relay to manage the on/off functions, but found to open/close the valve you need to reverse the polarity of the DC motor. This information was very useful to find out, I was about to write things all wrong! Now I have plenty of lead time to design, test and build my watering system.

That's it for now!



Return to “Vegetable Garden Progress + Photos & Videos”