Automatic watering system

This was one of my two Mother's Day gifts. It was the perfect gift because I bought one for myself last year and I loved it. It made the most of all my work in the garden. With a battery operated timer (additional $80), this thing is dynamite.  It is inexpensive, in the area of $20, and it can be used manually.  We have about $150 in this thing and it does about 400-500 square feet of garden beds.  It comes on three times a day, and we have been adding to it gradually as the spring has progressed. We are free of watering for the season!

 This is a particularly arid place to garden.  The soil is mainly sand, at least where it isn't sea shells! After some research I found that mulch alone, piled on high every year, would improve my soil more than rototilling with applied compost and manure.  After reading that advice in numerous sources I decided that it was the route to follow, so I did. Because I couldn't procure hay, or alfalfa bales, I opted out for pine bark mulch which I could have delivered.  Supposedly the alphalfa is very rich in nitrogen nutrients, which is why I still have in mind to apply some to the garden beds yet! Anyway, I applied the pine bark mulch for the past two years. It has improved the quality of the soil, I know that because I now find worms in the soil, that didn't happen before. About a week ago I found a toad in the garden, several times over several days. Both of those two events tell me that the quality of my soil has improved immensely in the areas I mulched.   The other advantage of the mulch is that it holds the water applied by the misting system above....hence the toad thinks its a great place to live.  Below I will post some photos of the other system parts required to set up this system. It all holds up well and is very inexpensive. You customize it your system with different style head on custom cut thin hoses, to create your system, then just plug it all together by slipping pieces into each other.