Multiple Rain Barrel Drip System (Part 2)

Last month I built a (one barrel) Rain Barrel Water System for my garden. Unfortunately, one barrel full of rain water will only last a couple of days to feed all the plants, if there is no additional rain. Consequently, I added two more barrels (total of three), so that I would have garden water for a least a week without a refill. If there is no rain I have to supplement the water in the barrels with a garden hose.

In order to have the rain barrels provide water to the garden automatically I also bought a water timer that comes on at a set time each day and allows the water to run out of the rain barrel through a main half inch hose. The main half inch hose is then connected to a network of smaller quarter inch hoses ending in drip emitters at each of about 50 plants. The emitters are preset for one gallon of water per hour for a garden hose pressure system. In the rain barrel gravity feed system with very little pressure, the water drips at about a quart of water per hour. I have the water timer adjusted for 30 minutes per day in the early morning to provide each plant with about a half quart of water.

The barrels are set on top of building blocks (8x8x16 inches) to give adequate support for a barrel full of water. The blocks are piled two wide and six high for a total height of 48 inches. This height provides enough water pressure for the water to run out of the barrel by gravity only with no need for a pump. It is also important to level the blocks so that each barrel is exactly level with the next barrel. I found for my set up that the two block sets had to be 26 inches apart on center so that the manifold pieces would be level and fit together.

The rain barrels are connected together with a PVC pipe manifold. As rain runs off my garden shed roof into a rain gutter, it is piped into the first rain barrel. Since the barrels are all connect at the bottom with a manifold, the rain water fills all three barrels simultaneously. Excess water runs out a top hole in each barrel. Make sure you have a good seal on all the PVC connections with PVC cement. In addition, put some silicone tub sealer around the connection where the PVC comes out of the bottom of the barrel. Once it gets wet with water, the seals are hard to fix.

I selected ¾ inch PVC so that all the connecting pieces could eventually connect to a regular garden hose with a simple pipe adapter. The total cost was about $200 for a three barrel system or less for a one barrel system. The approximate individual cost is as follows: Three trash barrels ($30), One Water Timer ($30), PVC Manifold for 3 barrels ($20), Drip Hose ($20), Drip Emitters and Hose Connectors ($30), Drip Irrigation Starter Kit ($25), and Thirty building blocks ($45). Although the cost may be a large investment, the system will last for years and save a lot of time with the automatic watering.

Most of the parts can be purchased at Home Depot (drip hose and kits). Additional parts can be purchased online from DropWorks.Com or DripDepot.Com or Amazon.Com. DripWorks.Com has an interactive catalog where you can flip pages and look at all the garden accessories.

I tried several water timers from Home Depot but they all had a diaphragm-valve and needed water pressure from a garden hose to work. I did some research online and found that a water timer with a simple ball-valve did not need any water pressure to have it open and close and could work with a rain-barrel gravity feed and almost zero water pressure system. Looking online I found the Gilmour Water Timer to work the best. I ordered one from Amazon.com and got it in a few days. It has been working great now for a few weeks.

You can see some photos of the three barrel system and its construction at the Picasa link below…
https://picasaweb.google.com/markryan312/GardenRainBarrelSystemPart2#

You can see a YouTube video at the link below…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4XLihRNbfE

You can see my previous Blog on one rain barrel at the link……
http://opennutshell.blogspot.com/2011/05/garden-plants-and-rain-barrel-drip.html

Comments always welcome…. markryan82@comcast.net

Garden Plants and Rain Barrel Drip Irrigation

Getting the garden ready is always time consuming but can also be rewarding when completed. In addition, to the weeding and watering all summer, you also have to watch out for the garden pests whether they be       humans, animals or insects. That is where a good fence is handy. After a hard winter with a lot of snow, I had  to repair some of last year’s fence with new screening, wood braces and screws. I recently noticed some animals prowling he area looking for tasty vegetable leaves to eat. The gopher is back, a raccoon, a brown fox, skunks and plenty of birds. You can see some photos and a video at the web links below. Read on first.
The next chore is to rototil the soil and rake out the rocks and debris. The New England soil seems to grow rocks like potatoes. Each year I find more and more. I then add some fertilizer, compost and dry manure to replenish some of the nutrients used up by last year’s plants.

The first plantings are the potatoes and onions. These are hardy and can be planted even before the last frost which is around Memorial Day, in southern New England. I dig a trench around the outside garden fence and drop in the potato cuttings with eyes facing up about six inches apart. I then cover the potatoes with about four inches of soil and pack loosely. As the plants grow, I push more soil around the stems so the roots and potatoes grow deeper. I use the same method for the onions.

The next plants are a mix of vegetables. Although I usually start plants from seeds beginning in March, the time just passed by too quickly, so I bought some already grown plants in flats at the garden center. This year I bought three types of tomatoes (cheery, big boy and early girl). In addition, I got some eggplant, peppers, butternut squash, zucchini, romaine lettuce, and string beans. You can see a diagram of the garden and the location of plants in the photo link below.

I then placed each plant between 1 and 3 feet apart so they will have room to grow. Latter I will put six foot tall stakes and metal baskets for the tomatoes. I also tried to place the plants in a different place from last year’s plants. This helps with more nutrients and also eliminates any plant specific fungus that may be stiil around from last year. After digging each plant hole with a trowel, I place in the plant and firmly pack in the loose soil. I then make a small circular trough in the soil around the plant with the trowel so that when I water, the water stays around the plant and doesn’t run off.

This year I decided to put in a drip irrigation watering system. This conserves water, allows for slower and deeper watering, the water soaks into the soil over time and prevents water runoff. It also keeps the water at the roots where it is needed and off the leaves where fungus or mold grows on wet leaves that results when water is sprayed on the plants.

I connected the main drip hose to an elevated rain barrel, thus allowing the water to run by gravity feed through the network of hoses. This eliminates the use of garden pressure hoses or electric water pumps. There is one ½ in. main water hose that runs down the center of the garden connects to a network of ¼ in. hoses running out to each plant. On the end of each ¼ in. hose is a drip emitter that allows 1 GPH of water to drip on to the plant roots.

Later I will install a water timer to the main hose that comes out of the rain barrel. The timer will be set for about 15 minutes to provide about a quart of water to each plant. After trying several water timers, I found that most timers are made to run on the end of a garden faucet which has about 30 psi pressure. This pressure helps regulate the diaphragm valve to open and close. However, this type of timer will not work on a rain barrel gravity feed system since the water pressure is very little about (0-1 psi). Consequently, I bought a Gilmour water time that has a ball valve that does not depend on pressure and will work in the rain barrel setup.

Hopefully, my rain barrel water system with a timer will be a great addition to the garden for those times that I am away from home during the summer. No more watering the vegetable garden with garden hose in hand which normally took about an hour moving the hose around each side of the garden and soaking about 50 plants.

You can see a video clip of My “Rain Barrel Drip Irrigation System” on YouTube at the link below …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KroiW2PWFxU
You can also see some photos of the garden plants and the rain barrel watering system by clicking on the link below….
https://picasaweb.google.com/markryan312/GardenPlants#
You can buy a drip irrigation starter kit and supplies at several places. Checkout some of the websites below…
Home Depot…. (type in the search bar…drip irrigation kits, water timers) http://homedepot.com/
Amazon….. (water timers) http://amazon.com/
DripWorks…. (kits, hoses, connectors) http://dripworks.com/
Drip Depot…. (mini emitters, connectors) http://dripdepot.com/

Comments and suggestions welcome… markryan82@comcast.net

New Book Formats - (Print, PDF, ePub)

New Book Formats - (Print, PDF, ePub)
(see info below for free books)

I have created a slide presentation in Powerpoint (PPT) to illustrate my books and all their different formats. You can download the Powerpoint Presentation to your computer directly and view it in PPT format if you have the Powerpoint program on your computer or you can go to my Picasa Web Albums to just view it as photos in a slideshow format. Select your choices below. You can also get some free digital books, see below.
If you choose the Powerpoint Presentation, it is animated with slide transitions and hyperlinks that you can click on to view my books at Lulu.Com or move to the next slide. If you just watch the Picasa slides (with no animations) you can also see my books at Lulu by clicking the link below. It has been quite an experience for me learning about and then trying out the different formats and testing them. I have basically learned how to do this all by researching the info on Google.

I also save some money doing the formatting myself when I want to publish another book. If I just send my new book in WORD format to my publisher at Lulu.Com they will format it for me for a cost. To just take my already published books and reformat them for the new ePub version to be sold on Lulu or at the Apple bookstore called iBooks, the cost for me is $99 (up to 250 words), $199 (up to 500 words) and $299 (up to 750 words). The cost to advertise a new book in various media outlets can run in the thousands. So I have decided to “just do it” all myself and have fun learning a new skill in the process.

I have tried to make the books available for purchase in three formats for your convenience on Lulu.Com. They are Paperback, PDF and ePub. Each format requires a different set of parameters that need to be adjusted to make the final product readable in that format. The cost of each book is pretty much determined by the publisher and if I want the book circulated to other media outlets like Google, Amazon or iBooks. I still have to pay almost 80% of the final sale price to buy my own copy of the book. Nothing is free. With each sale, I only receive a few pennies revenue as the author. However, I am glad for each sale as my books get greater circulation and readership.

The Paperback format is a regular printed book with colorful cover and white paper pages with black print. Some readers prefer to hold a real book in their hands as they browse the pages. The Paper version is first typed in WORD and requires, page sizing (4x6 inch for Pocketbook), margins, fonts, font sizes, headers, footers, page numbering, page breaks and any special hypertext links. I then upload it to Lulu and go through their publishing Wizard to design a cover, select a copyright, describe a preview and then select the marketing outlets.

The PDF is similar to paper but is in digital format (Portable Document Format) that you can download to your computer and read with Adobe Reader (free download at Adobe.com). After, you can either read it on the computer screen or print it out to paper. To get the WORD document into PDF you need to have a WORD (Add On) that saves the document in PDF or a special conversion program from Adobe. Once in PDF, you can resize the document to fit the screen.

The ePub is a new format that you can read on a handheld device like the iPod Touch from Apple or the Kindle from Amazon. In this format the document is free flowing without paragraph endings or beginnings and can be automatically resized to fit the screen of your viewing device. You can also resize the text larger or smaller, you can flip pages with a finger tap on the screen and you can select a table of contents that allows you to move to another section or chapter of the book. You can also set bookmarks or highlight or look up info in a dictionary or email a section.

You will need an eReader APP to read the ePub books on your iPod Touch. I find the iBooks APP to be the easiest of all the eReaders. It is free and you can download it from the APP Store. To get my book in ePub format, I first save the manuscript in WORD to an HTML Web Format. I then have a special program called SIGIL that converts the HTML to ePub. Once in ePub format you can adjust the text for page breaks, chapters and table of contents. This took a lot of trial and error to find all the finite nuances to this formatting method. Once in ePub format you are now ready to upload the book to Lulu and process it through their editing system. This is all quite time consuming but also satisfying when you are done creating your own book.

Once you have the iBooks APP on your iPod Touch your can go to the iBooks Store and download thousands of books. Some are free and others have a cost. You can also get books or documents sent by email in either ePub or PDF format that you can open up in iBooks with just a tap of your finger. In iBooks you can flip back and forth from PDF to Books and see all your selections neatly stacked on a book shelf (See Picture Above). You can also buy eBooks from Amazon and other outlets and download them to your computer or iPod Touch and open them with the iBooks APP. You can see additional info about iBooks at the following link at Wikipedia …. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBooks .

If you would like a sample eBook to read in iBooks on your iPod Touch or iPad, send me an email and I will send you one of my books free. If you want to try one in PDF to read on your computer or iPod free, send me an email. You can also purchase any of my stories in digital format (Paper, ePub or PDF) for as little as $1.76 at Lulu.Com. Try it out, we now live in a new digital age and need to learn new ways or be left behind.


Click your choice below (1,2,3)


1. Powerpoint Presentation ….. click link …….. https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AbdIp6qZEsAXZGZqdHdrODVfMjFoa2JnejhnNA&hl=en
Then click (Start Presentation)

2. Picasa Web Albums at ….. click link …. https://picasaweb.google.com/markryan312/AdventuresOfTheRomeoGangBooks#

3. Lulu.Com …click link ….. http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?fListingClass=0&fSearch=Adventures+of+the+Romeo+Gang%2C+Mark+Ryan&fSubmitSearch=Go&showingSubPanels=&fSort=relevance_desc



Let me know if you have any problems with the selections. I am always willing to help. Comments are always welcome. markryan82@comcast.net .

Diet or Die ?

I think that most of us would pick the diet. It seems that everywhere you look today; we have become an obese society. I see the photos on the TV news of kids and adults walking along the busy streets or playing in the school yard with their “love handles” protruding over their belt line.

Recommendations from the FDA and the Surgeon General have sighted the need to lose weight and exercise as a means of controlling your weight, reducing heart disease and living longer. Restaurants are now downsizing their food quantities and schools are serving more nutrition meals to school children. Even the chow lines in the military services have reduced the amount of fatty options we are feeding our soldiers.

Every year we make our New Year’s resolution to go on a diet and loose weight and do more exercise and live healthier lives. However, after a few months of struggling we our back on the usual bad eating habits as well as less exercise.

However, this year I promised myself to try again but I do need some incentives and more help. It is very tough trying to diet on your own. At my annual physical, my family doctor gave me a general good bill of health but saw that I had gained about 20 pounds since last year. He urged me to diet and exercise more and also offered me to participate in some programs offered at my HMO. These involved a nutritionist and an exercise program. I had tried them before but with limited success.

Recently, I saw an APP on my iPod which is also available on-line at http://MyFitnessPal.com . It is a free program and has a bunch of on-line tools to help track your food intake and your exercise. It gives you daily progress reports and short incentive messages. Since I am a gadget person, I put the APP on my iPod and also synchronized it with my desktop computer. That way I can enter and see my progress with my iPod mobile devise or at home on the PC.

Since I know that I have to keep accurate records either on the iPod or PC, I try to stick to a diet and do some daily exercise so that I will have data to enter but also see some meaningful changes. The iPod has become my personal mentor. It has forced me to stay true to my set goals. It’s like someone is looking over your shoulder and reminding you of all the do’s and don’ts. However to my benefit, over the last 4 days I have lost 3 pounds and have successfully kept to a healthy diet and to some daily exercise.

When I started the program last week, I weighed 256 pounds. My ideal weight should be a max of 175 pounds. With the iPod program I could calculate my BMI (Body Mass Index) and BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate per day) so that I could set some practical goals. Using my age, weight and height, my BMR is calculated to be about 2400cal. I decided that for a minimum I wanted to loose at least 1 pound per week so by next year I would weigh about 200 pounds.

Normally, nutritionists have calculated that 1 pound of body weight is equal to about 3500 calories. Consequently if you eat 500 calories less per day than your body needs from your (BMR), then in 7 days you will have lost 3500 calories or 1 pound of body weight. The converse is also true for gaining weight.

Since I want to loose 1 pound per week, then I have to reduce my calorie intake by 500cal per day or 3500cal per week. With my calculated BMR (2400), I subtract the calorie deficit (500) and get my maximum daily calorie intake (1900). This is the maximum number of calories that I can consume each day so that I reach my goal of 1 pound per week. I can also reduce this even further with exercise.

The neat thing about the iPod program (MyFitnessPal) is that it has a data base of 630,000 food choices and their equivalent calorie amounts as well as thousands of exercises with their calorie equivalents. In addition you can adjust the actual amounts of food intake (cups, tablespoon, etc.) or exercises (reps, minutes, etc.) with a dial meter. The portion or amount is then adjusted automatically. You then hit the ADD button and it gets added to you daily diet chart. Everything is then automatically updated and synchronized with your mobile device and/or PC.

Of course some days I am under my calorie goals for the day which allows me to go over a little the next day. However, I have tried to stay under my maximum calorie intake so that I can loose more weight faster, as long as you are eating a balanced diet with all the needed nutrients.

I have included some snapshots below of some of my Diet Info so you can see the progress that I have made. One of the reasons for posting this info on my Blog is that I want to keep this program going for at least a year. I know that you all will be asking me if I have continued my regiment, with the same exuberance in a week or month from now. Wish me luck. If you like, please join me on this health quest. The program makes a claim that followers of the program have 3x more success when done in groups.

Craft Fairs

Well it’s that time of year again for Craft Fairs. Although they pop up now and then all year, the fall is the peak time for the Holiday Fairs. Some are small gatherings held at a school or church and others are larger, held at the big auditorium.

The largest fairs around are the Castleberry Fairs. You can see a calendar of events at their web site http://www.castleberryfairs.com/index.php
In Wilmington, MA where I live there are several Castleberry fairs held during the year at the Shriner Auditorium just off Rte. 93. The fairs attract over 300 crafters that sell their wears including jewelry, knitted clothing, toys, hand-carved sculptures, glassware, paintings, yard ornaments, wind vanes, pottery, jams and jellies and other assorted items.

I prefer to sell my crafts at the smaller fairs since the entrance fee (table space fee) is smaller at about $40-$60 for a 6x10 foot space. The Castleberry Fairs charge $300 for their table space.

My craft involves decorative painting on wood, glass, metal and slate. I purchase blank items at discount stores and then paint a decorative design on the item. For instance I paint roses on wine glasses and then resell the painted glasses individually or in sets for $5.00 each. I also paint on small wood stools, end tables, metal buckets, clay pots, wood signs, mailboxes and I have made wood clocks.

I start my painting at the end of summer and continue through December, restocking items that I have sold or that have been custom ordered. Recently, I sold a few end tables with flowers painted on them. A customer then asked if I could paint a seaside scene on the end tables with seagulls which she wanted to give to her mother as a Christmas present. It generally takes me about two weeks to do a custom order when it’s mixed in with the other jobs.

This year I only signed up for a few fairs. They are/were at Tewksbury High School, Woburn Son’s of Italy, St. Thomas Church in Wilmington and Austin Prep in Reading. The older you get, the harder it is to lug all the painted items back and forth to the fairs. I have about six big rubber maid boxes filled with all my painted items. After carrying them all out of my basement and into the SUV, I then carry them all in to the fair. Each trip takes an hour. After, it takes another hour to just unpack them and set them up on the fair table and shelves. I then have the reverse job at the end of the day. That is about four hours of lugging boxes and another six hours selling items at the fair. Oh, my achy old bones.

Each year I try to paint something new. This year I got some roof slates from a good neighbor and cut them down into 8x12 inch slate welcome signs. I then painted various items on the slate and sealed them with a Poly Acrylic Sealer. The slates came from an old house which was built about 1850 along the Middlesex Canal. Although the slates are reused to patch old slate roofs they can be also used for decorative purposes.

On some of the slates, I painted some scenes of the ferry boats that were horse drawn along the Middlesex Canal in the late 1800s. You can see some photos at the links below.

You can also see some other photos of the Applefest Fair at Tewksbury High School and those items at my web site. Just click on the link below……

Applefest Fair ….. http://picasaweb.google.com/markryan312/Applefest11610#

Web Site ….. http://markscrafts.com

My next fair is on Saturday, (10AM-3PM), November 20, 2010, at St. Thomas Church, Villanova Hall in Wilmington, MA. 01887. Come checkout my decorative paintings.

Comments welcome ……… markryan82@comcast.net

Removing Lichen

Over the last few years I have noticed some lichen growing on my house roof. It seemed to have started when some trees near the front and back of the house shaded the roof and kept the roof damp. Each year the lichen spread out more and covered the entire roof. Although the trees have now been removed, the lichen continues to grow.

I tried scrapping them off, but they soon returned. There are fine rootlets that dig into the shingle tar and when scrapped away leave a small indentation. After searching the internet and reading Peter Horton in the Globe, there seems to be no cure for this problem.

However, I think I discovered a possible solution. Lichen is a composite plant growth of an algae and a fungus living together in a symbiotic relationship. See link ……. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen

Since you can kill algae in pool water with an algaecide, it might also work on lichen. Using this idea, I bought some pool algaecide called HTH Algae Guard (3x concentrated) and applied it to the greenish gray lichen. The next day the lichen turned brown and seemed to have died.

Over the next few days I applied some more HTH with a small brush and let it absorb for a few minutes. I tried to work only on a small area about two feet square so I could scrap off the lichen while they were still wet with the HTH.

I then used a hand scrub brush with strong bristles and scrubbed the lichen off while scrubbing the HTH into the shingle. Painting the roof with HTH will prevent further lichen growth. It was much easier scrubbing the lichen off after applying the HTH than without.

You can buy the HTH at any hardware or pool supply place. I bought mine at Walmarts. However, they only stock it during the summer season. You can see some photos of the lichen and the HTH materials in the link below …. http://picasaweb.google.com/markryan312/Lichen92510#

In the photos of the roof, you can see that the lichen has been removed from near the roof peek and along the right side. The area in the middle of the roof still has the lichen not yet removed but will be worked on later.

I would assume that the HTH might also be used to remove moss and mold growing on walkways, house siding and green stained yard furniture.

Comments and suggestions welcome: …. Send email to … markryan82@comcast.net

Gardens and Gophers - 2010

The harvest this year has been pretty poor. I only got a few good size zucchini and some yellow squash. The eggplant has been nibbles away and the corn is dry and small. The tomatoes seemed to be stunted in growth with leaves dry and brittle. All of this is probably due to lack of rain water. However, I am still getting a lot of cherry tomatoes.

Last year there was too much rain water, this year it is too dry and hot. If you depend on Mother Nature to help water the garden, you were out of luck this year. Since I have been away from home several days each week, it has been hard for me to water the garden on a regular basis and consequently the plants have suffered.

Another reason has to do with a critter that is living under my back yard shed and near the garden. He has been feeding on the big leaf vegetables and after a few weeks my zucchinis have no leaves. He has also nibbled on the juicy stems near the base of the zucchinis which has prevented the plants from getting water.

Consequently, I have written a going away poem for my little garden friend. Hope you can appreciate the humor and frustration.


My Friend Gomez

Gomez and I get up early every morning to tend the garden. We start by weeding and trimming the edges. I pull out the dead leaves. Gomez nibbles the juicy ones, as his plump body wiggles and weaves.

I use a hoe and Gomez likes to use his paws with sharp claws. I turn up the soil to root out the tough weeds and Gomez looks for the grubs on which he feeds.

After a while I add a little fertilizer with a triple 10 blend while Gomez likes to add a natural one, dropping a little here and there achieving the same end.

I tried to coax Gomez to start his own garden far away from mine. I spread some moth balls and fox pee around Gomez’s den, so he would find some other place to dine.

Now that he has eaten all the zucchini leaves, he nibbles away at the grass. There isn’t much left of that either, since the dry summer sun has burned it up fast.

I think its time for Gomez to take a trip, so I ordered a special traveling box that is just the right size. It’s called a Have-A-Heart-Trap, I hope he will like the surprise.

I hear they serve great meals in Gomez’s future home in the woods down south. However, I think I have had enough with Gomez and like a mad dog, I am beginning to foam at the mouth.

If you haven’t guessed by now, my friend Gomez is a Gopher. One of God’s little creatures that have some great purpose in life, but only God knows what for.

Yours truly,
Farmer Mark