You could try burying PVC with holes drilled in it, but you will want to have extremely small holes. Over time, the plant roots will still grow into the pipe and tend to clog the holes, though the roots will get water inside the pipe. A water permeable covering would be necessary to keep the roots out. With a 3 foot wide bed, you would likely need to run 2 lines down each bed, 1 foot in from each side. Otherwise the water may not get to the outside of the bed very easily. The pipes Albert saw in Utah & Wyo. are called gated pipe and are made of PVC, also. They typically range in size from 6" diameter up to about 12" and have retangular holes about 1 1/4" high and 2 1/2" long every 20-30 inches which have sliding gates in them to allow you to open or close the gates. They are easy to use and regulate and conserve water since it doesn't soak into the ground while getting to the field, but they also need fairly trash free water or the gates will get plugged and stop flowing. The water sources are usually surface water from rivers or reservoirs delivered in canals. To use gated pipe in your garden, if you have a large enough supply of water, you would lay the pipe across the top of the garden, then run the water down water marks or furrows where it would soak in (flood irrigation with furrows). Depending on how loose and absorbant your soil is, it can take anywhere from several hours up to 24 hours to get the ground soaked up. You also have to be able to deal with waste water coming out the bottom as it is very hard to regulate the flow to get it to the bottom of the garden without flowing out. You could lay out 1" PVC lines and put connections and valves in periodically, then connect these to sprinklers. If you don't want to use sprinklers (I don't after the plants are up--they sprinkle everything, including the ground that isn't planted and that doesn't need watering, plus they encourage disease by wetting the leaves and keeping the humidity up), you might consider laying drip tape on the surface, with the emitters down, and connect that to your water source, maybe even covering the tape and soil with black plastic or some other mulch so you can take it up in the fall and to help reduce evaporation from the soil. When using drip tape or similar devices with very small holes, you need to use very clean water--ditch water should be settled and filtered to get all but the finest particles out, and periodically you should inject acid into the water, such as dilute sulphuric or phosporic acid for a short time to remove the lime that builds up. You can inject all your fertilizers into the water to fertilize that way if you want. Whatever you do, the more easy, water saving, time saving= higher cost. You'll have to decide where to make the trade-off. With flood irrigation you will use more water to irrigate, but water less often, not more often than once a week, maybe every 2 weeks if the weather is damp or cool. With drip lines, you can water as thoroughly and infrequently, but your garden will do better if you irrigate quite frequently, even every day, supplying just a small amount of water to keep the ground moist but not wet all the time. With the frequent waterings, the plants never get too wet or too dry as they do with flood irrigation. I used soaker hoses for several years on a flower bed and they worked great, although by the end of the first season they no longer seeped water, the minerals had completely closed them up. The next year I drilled very small holes, using maybe a 3/32 inch drill, about every foot, and that worked for the year. Just had to regulate the water supply so it didn't come out of the hose under much pressure. Each year I had to re-drill the holes, though, as they would be closed up again.

Dave--(or anyone else?): I am really confused by these "weeping" Norway spruce cultivars. You show one picture of a 'Reflexa' that was not staked but is growing erect, then another picture of the same kind of tree that had to be staked. So, does this tree grow erect sometimes, and not all the time? As for the P. abies 'Frohburg' I find confusing statements. You say it needs to be staked or it will grow prostrate. Iseli nursery, and a couple of other places on-line, says it is an upright grower. Elsewhere I see a cultivar name P. abies 'Frohburg Prostrata,' with the 'Prostrata' sugggesting a flopping tree. So what am I supposed to think? Now in the Gotelli collection at the National Arboretum in DC they have two P. abies 'Inversa' trees. Both of these have picturesque irregular habits, but they are definately not prostrate. One, or I think both, have multiple erect trunks growing upright with severely pendulous side branches. I would like to grow one of these, but several sources say they will not grow upright. I have also seen another P. abies 'Inversa,' or so it is labelled, in the courtyard of the Winterthur museum in Delaware. This tree is also growing upright without any staking. And there is another similar tree growing prominently in the National Memorial Park in Fairfax, VA, but this tree has no label at all. I don't know if you have seen my postings in the trees forum under the topic "Large Willow" where I comment on the rampant confusion about golden weeping willows, but I may be even more confused and frustrated in trying to get information about the growth habit of these so-called weeping varieties of NS. I want to grow one or more, but what do I buy? And from whom? Are those I saw labelled 'Inversa' actually something that I can buy as 'Inversa," or is that an incorrect name? And this 'Frohburg' thing? Is there a 'Frohburg' that grows erect, and then another that is 'Frohburg Prostrata' that must always be staked--or which is more properly meant to grow along the ground. Of course, I assume that any of these that are potentially erect growers probably must be staked for a time, but from what I have seen with my own eyes (at the Nat Arb, and at Winterthur, and at the Nat Mem Park), at least one, and maybe more than one of these cultivars, can grow on their own after a period of time being staked, in at least some irregular erect fashion. So, is 'Inversa' one of these? Or 'Frohburg' or what? I have seen them, want one, but what one, or ones is/are it/they?? H E L P!! this is driving me nuts!! --Spruce

Jo, any time you catch and release a critter, you can pretty well plan on it coming back. It's fine to be a humanitarian about it, just as long as you know that's what they're going to do. I think that some of them can beat you back to the property, and dumping them where they'll be a problem for someone else is not a very good plan either. I hate to have to shoot things, but there are times when it's really the only thing to do. Dawn, I know what you mean abut every day being an adventure. When I went out to check the tomatoes earlier, I found a small turtle that was feasting on a small fruit I had tossed aside. Not a terrapin. An actual turtle. I just left him alone. One of the more exciting things that happened is that I have a big bank of windows in front of my computer and around to the side, so I get a really good view of most of the pasture. One day during the heavy snow, in the middle of the afternoon, I saw something swoop down and grab a small prey and then fly up to the top of one of the sheds. I figured it was a hawk. Naturally, I got out the big binocs, because I wanted a closer look. Imagine my amazement when he turned his head and looked at me and I realized it was not a hawk at all. It was a huge owl, out hunting in mid-day! As far as those black snakes, we tried the artificial eggs, and I tried jamming the holes full of bird netting, and we shot a bunch of them. I was horrified to learn that they can kill a full-grown hen. My neighbor who raises chickens as a business is the one who told me what the problem was, after I had him come and look at a dead bird. What seemed to finally cut the population way down was when I put out that Snake Stopper powder. I've only done it once, and probably need to renew it pretty soon, but we haven't found a snake in the chickenhouse since then. Not that they can't come in and steal eggs and leave again. I just haven't seen any of them this summer. I scattered the powder when I figured snake season was about to begin, as soon as it really warmed up, and it seems to be working.. Pat

You can put in a sealed pit with a sewage pump which is expensive but if you want a bathroom in the basement someday it is a good first step. You can do an unsealed pit with a sump pump and run it that way as well again though you need to install a pit. Or you can do what I have seen in many homes which is run the washing machine into the existing sump pump and the route the sump pump into the sewer. If you do it this way make sure to put isolation valves in so when you aren't doing laundry you can turn the sump back outside otherwise in many locations it is illegal.