Picket Fence Weblog

The garden has had a miserable summer. Up here in Rochester, it’s hot and humid – but very infrequent rain.

Most of our plants are perennials, which can tolerate our climate. No veggies this year (no time! no space!) and only a couple of annuals. But with the sun and scorching 95F temps, even the hardiest plants were stressed.

So last weekend, we installed a home-made watering system. Three sprinklers (the rat-tat-tat kind, we bought cheap plastic ones and will have to replace them next year), some brass valves to split the water supply, and a water timer to turn it all off automatically. We cut up an old leaky hose – using the non-leaky-parts, of course – to run between everything, buried just 2″ deep so we can mow without moving anything. Works great – and we spent under $60 for the whole thing.

And guess what? As soon as we finished it started to rain.

– Wendy