Day 17 – Transplanting into a Straw Bale Garden
Day 20 – Some days one just wakes up and realizes the possibility of doing things one has never done before. Like making custom lengths of soaker hose. Laugh if you must, but it was a welcome revelation to me. So, on one recent trip to the garden nursery where my oldest son works, I asked him about it. He knew exactly what I would need, because, as he said, “When you work at a nursery, you learn hose repair.”
At home, after raiding my husband’s tool box, I made the irreversible cut in the “mother hose.” This I accomplished with a normal pair of kitchen scissors. It wasn’t as easy as cutting paper, but I only had to apply minimal pressure and the cut was clean and perpendicular. I felt a satisfaction similar to knowing I had found the key to solving a chemistry equation, this was such a novel venture for me.
The next step was to twist the cut end onto the piece that would enable it to be capped. After that I needed to pinch the metal fingers down, but found the pliers wouldn’t open wide enough (not my son’s fault, he didn’t tell me which tools to use). I visited the tool box again and found something that I couldn’t name, but was perfect. ( my husband now informs me that they are channel locks )
I have saved the caps from the ends of a few soaker hoses that were no longer functional, so dug one of those and a rubber washer out of a box in the greenhouse and placed them on the modified hose end. Then I bustled down to the straw bale garden and placed the new miniature hose in a visually pleasing spiral. It fit perfectly, but the final test would be turning the water on. A moment later, it was sparkling appropriately, showing that the new end was working. Chemistry equation solved!
Next up: Straw Bale Garden Complications and Problem Solving
