by George Collins » Mon Mar 26, 2012 11:36 pm
Guy,
We use stadium cups to water with. Each is filled about 1/2 to 2/3rds full for each walnut. With the nine planted yesterday, our total is up to 429. We are also tending my uncle's trees and he has about 100 so that brings the total up to ~ 529.
Then there are the three chestnuts recently planted along with the two that we moved to new homes which are being treated the same as the bare root seedlings just planted. That brings the total up to 534. The chestnuts deserve a special mention also because their location is, by far, the most inaccessible and are located on a steep hill. Watering the first row is easy: it's all down hill. It's that second row that is a man check.
Now add in the forest garden which is being watered, for the greater part, on the same schedule as the walnuts since most of them were bare root seedlings. The only difference being that the standard sized trees get two stadium cups full and those in the low tree and bush layer each get one full stadium cup. There are approximately 40 standard sized trees and probably half that many in the shrub and low tree layer so call it 60ish. That brings the total up to a number knocking on 600.
Yesterday, we used a 55 gallon drum and a 30 gallon pot that Youngblood has left over from buying molasses blocks for his cows. We filled those two containers nearly full and we already had probably 10 5-gallon buckets already in the field that had been half filled with rain water. We weren't totally out of water when we left the walnut grove, but we were very, very close. To water my uncle's trees, we had to refill maybe 5 or 6 5-gallon buckets mostly full.
To water the forest garden took about 5, 5-gallon buckets and to water the chestnuts took about 2/3rds of a 5-gallon bucket.
The way the operation runs, is we fill up as many big containers as we think we'll need, take two times as many 5-gallon buckets as we have those that will be doing the actual watering and head to the grove. Once there, I fill buckets for all of those doing actual watering with as much water as their strength will allow them to carry and then one for myself. We each take a row and go to work. The ones not watering then form a bucket brigade of sorts and start filling the buckets left on the trailer. As we each run out, we return to the trailer, drop off the empty and get a full one and the process continues until all is done.
Last year, the only thing we were watering were the 170 black walnuts then planted. We got to where we could water them all in probably 15 minutes or so once in the grove. Tack on about 10 minutes of prep time, 5 minutes of lining out the wayward youngun and 30 minutes tops would put us back at the house. (And there was that one trip to the doctor's office, but that's a whole other story.)
The only really big difference this year is the sheer number of trees and the fact that this year's planting is about a mile away whereas those planted last year were a couple hundred yards away.
And while I would never voluntarily go back to Parris Island, there is a trait that Marines seem to share across time: given the choice between gutting it out and investing in new technology . . . we water by hand.
Besides, it makes my kids hard.
"Solve world hunger, tell no one." "The, the, the . . . The Grinch!"
"If you can't beat them, bite them."