Basically, I took my shower in the greenhouse yesterday.

See, I’ve had experience with those misting systems, we used to have one on our patio. Mostly it worked, but it was a pain to get all the nozzles pointing in the right direction. What I’m saying is that I THOUGHT it was a pain, working with about 15 feet of hose, but what I’m REALLY saying is that 75 feet is much, much worse…

The concept is great—string up some ¼ inch hose with evenly spaced nozzle doohickies, connect it to your water source of choice, and water your plants.

Actually, there’s a bit more to it:

First, you have to attach the hose to the greenhouse. Most people probably string it along the middle of the beds, up high, and while I know my grow lights are water resistant, I still didn’t want them getting soaked. Also, I’m not that tall, and I still maintain I hung these at the correct height to avoid going up and down a ladder all day. Long story short, my hose runs along the side wall, with the nozzles pointing straight over the beds. It works.

But the point is that they send you these tiny plastic things with a tiny nail—already inserted, thank goodness, and they’re a bit hard to hit just right, while you’re trying to keep them on the hose in the right location on the wall. Yes, you could attach them and THEN put the hose in, but that requires a certain dexterity and knife to pry the doohickey from the wall just a tad. And then it pops off. Also, my knife is rather sharp…

So the hose is attached, the wounds are bandaged, and my back is killing me. Also, I initially ran a single line from the back of the greenhouse to the end of the center bed and back—which looked odd, but it worked. Sort of. I spent some time ducking under and getting the first shower or three.

I got some bits and pieces and used a T-connector to string just one line up the center bed. Much better.

Now, if you’ve never worked with these nozzles on a misting system, you are definitely in for some fun! You adjust the first one, then the second. You adjust the third one…and the first and second move. They’re either pointing at the wall or straight up in the air.

What I’m saying is that you need at least three hands to make all the adjustments. Four would be even better.

Next, you look around and see that some of these nozzles are merely dripping instead of misting, or maybe not working at all. And the only way to tell is if the water is on…I was soaked by the time we finished, and no, we weren’t done, just finished.

And finally, a word about water pressure. I mentioned before that I either needed a pump or a water tower for rain barrel watering, and we of course opted for the pump. However, when the water comes straight from the hose—wow, do you get results! Especially with the pump also hooked up. Unfortunately, that negates the use of the rain barrel altogether, so my husband has a few other pump parts he’s going to put in the barrel and we’ll see how that works.

In the meantime, I’m headed back out to probably take yet another shower in the greenhouse—and plant some tomatoes, zucchini, and potatoes!

UPDATE:

Yesterday, the seeds and plants got a good soaking while my husband worked on this water issue—hey, he volunteered while I was putting mulch in the garden itself.

We have four types of watering: rain barrel alone, with barely any pressure at all; rain barrel with pump, not bad but still takes an hour for a good soaking; hose from a hydrant, about 30 minutes’ watering time; and hose with the pump, 15 minutes and done.

So we’ve opted for the hydrant/pump combo. I’ll still use the rain barrel for any hand watering, filling the animals’ water dish in the garden, and maybe the fruit trees. But we’ve been talking about putting in another hydrant near or in the garden area for a while, so we’ll be calling “the guy” to come dig a trench as soon as I decide where to put it.