From dripping with sweat to drip irrigation

We've had a scorching heat wave over the last week or so which shows no sign of relenting.  Nearly 40 degrees in October is just ridiculous but unfortunately sets precedent for the long summer ahead.  To top it off we've only had 2.8mm of rain this month, leaving the grass crispy underfoot and tree leaves sagging in exasperation or just quitting altogether.

Having placed the orchard right at the front of the property to provide screening from the road and room for expansion, the thought of irrigating it didn't feature too high in my plans.  While that was fine over winter and the start of spring, bucketing water 200m each way, every second day during the current heat was not appealing in the least, let alone a feasible option unless I was planning to construct myself a yoke.  Irrigation was fast turning into a regular irritation.

The IBC.  You can also tell how dry the grass is (or lack thereof) in this shot.

After much deliberation, we decided a yoke was probably not the most appealing option.  We finally bit the bullet a couple of weekends ago and bought an IBC (international bulk container) second hand from a local as water storage for the drip irrigation system.

Our current pump is overkill for our needs (it came with the house and is technically a firefighter pump) so we attached some new irrigation pipe to another from one of the pump's four outlets up to the IBC to fill it and installed a float in the tank to cut off the flow once it was full.  It felt like we were doing the chicken dance with the number of elbows involved in attaching it all and creating the appropriate bends in the pipe.  I probably looked like I was doing the chicken dance too, hopping from one foot to the other trying to keep the ants from dismantling the flesh on my feet.  From the IBC the drip system is gravity and water pressure fed via a standard garden hose connected to the drip lines (yet more elbows and a T piece for something different).  It was surprisingly easy to set up, bar a gender mix up on one of the fittings, and it was done in one afternoon.

 We've only got two rows in the orchard so far.  The trees are lapping it up and are even starting to put on new growth after just two deep waterings with the drip irrigation!  The tank empties surprisingly quickly but at least the water isn't running off down hill and being wasted.

New growth on the mandarin which dropped most of its leaves in protest at the change in temperature.

Once we add more rows the water will be spread more thinly but hopefully the soil will have improved more by then to retain the water.  We're planning to build up the soil in between the plants in more of a swale style, then adjust the irrigation to be on the uphill side so it soaks into the mounds.  When we get a wet summer again this should also help the heavy rain to soak in and down rather than strip any more of the topsoil and silt up the dam.

Orchard origins

Where the orchard is planned is probably the flattest area on the block with only the gentlest of slopes towards the dam.  It would have been the perfect spot for a vegie patch aside from the need to plan an expedition, pack rations and don hiking gear and a Nepalese basket just to fetch some ingredients for dinner.  The driveway curves deceptively gently into the area and out again, making it difficult to design a staggered layout without adjusting the driveway which involve far too much lugging around of heavy gravel and result in me doing more staggering than the trees.

We decided to start the first row at the narrowest part and work either down towards the dam or each side of the row in the hope that there would be enough room to stagger the trees.  On marking it out it won't quite work that way but we should be able to fiddle with the edge of the driveway just a tad to make it right.

We started with the row marked Pecan, although the citrus will actually be there instead.  Still deciding whether to do a row above or just continue down towards the dam

I was trying to fit all the fruit trees of one family (eg citrus, rosaceae) together in a row but I'm not sure this is going to happen now unless we massively expand the citrus collection or abandon the lime as we'll only fit four trees across in this row. No doubt the former would mean a huge haul of citrus right through winter that we would then need to ply on our neighbours, families, work colleagues and perhaps even complete strangers when desperation finally set in.  The deciduous trees (rosaceae - apples, pear, stone fruit) were planned to be closest to the dam so that the cool air would help them get as much chill time as possible in winter.  This means we'd better decide what's going in the middle before we make the final row.

Despite all these grand plans we've so far managed to dig the grand sum of a single hole (a much easier job here than at the last place - no broken tools this time), mix in some mushroom compost and, nearly a month later, buy the first tree: a Washingon Navel Orange.  Something tells me this orchard will be a very long-winded work in progress.  At the present rate we'll end up starting row two as the first tree starts to bear fruit!

Just because I like things to be on the difficult side, currently there's no water supply to the area so a new hose attachment to the dam pump will need to be sorted out soon unless the rain decides to arrive. There's only so many times I'm willing to walk a bucket from the house to the orchard especially as I discovered yesterday I may now have to run the gauntlet of a swooping butcher bird.

To add insult to injury, all the fruit trees at the old place exploded in flowers shortly after we left. It's almost like they're celebrating our departure.  The only consolation is that we can still go back to harvest them for a short while.

The Washington Navel Orange looking a little exasperated at having to put down new roots