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Owned by Evan

Efficient gardens. Bigger harvests. Sell the Extra.

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2025 Garden in Review
Post a photo of your garden from the past season! What was your tastiest success and most gut-wrenching failure?
1 like • 8d
@Deborah Wyatt Dang, what a great harvest! I'm in the midwest and have two VERY young lemon trees I'm excited for them to produce but because... well... winter, I don't think I'll see anything like this! Any tips? What did you fertilize with? And do you happen to know the variety?
1 like • 4d
@Deborah Wyatt Great info here! Thanks so much for sharing :) I wish I could grow all those different types of tropical fruit! Hope the next season goes as well as this one!
Irrigation Help
Hi everyone! I'm facing a huge challenge, but I'm excited about the payoff. I recently moved from a 51-acre farm in Kentucky with forty-two 4'x50' raised beds down to a very productive 1.29-acre lot in Florida. (We just missed family and had to move back.) Space is now my biggest constraint, so my new motto is: Grow Up! My current indoor grow space is... unconventional. It's a former enclosed porch on an outbuilding (which will eventually be my workshop/classroom) I've converted into a greenhouse. I'm being kind—it was previously the infamous local biker hangout, The Bada Bing Club! (Please don't judge the history; I'm doing my best with what I have! 😉) Inside, I'm maximizing vertical space using ClosetMaid shelving, which was a generous gift. Here's my immediate logistical nightmare: I don't live on the property yet. My sister and I are in a rental until our house is built here. It is a royal pain to drive over every other day just to water everything by hand. I need to make this system self-sufficient. I am an irrigation beginner and need a reliable system that can handle all my unique needs. I need a fully automated, solar-powered watering system. Currently, there is no electricity running to the outbuilding or the pots outside, so solar power is the only way to go. Here's the technical setup I'm trying to water: 1. Indoor Greenhouse Shelving: I need emitters or misters running to plants on the ClosetMaid shelves. 2. Indoor Hanging Baskets: I need emitters or misters dropping down from the ceiling to water plants hanging above. 3. Outdoor Potted Plants: I have about 15 large pots outside the greenhouse that need their own irrigation line. I'm open to a system where I turn the water on manually, but the ideal solution would be 100% fully automated (timer-controlled). Does anyone have experience installing or recommending a solar-powered irrigation system for multiple zones (shelves/pots/hanging baskets)? Any advice on component names or specific kits would be a lifesaver!
Irrigation Help
0 likes • 4d
This is a great question and congrats on getting a new piece of land! This is a unique challenge but what I might recommend is making it so that you need the least amount of irrigation runs as possible. If you can get all the plug trays and hanging baskets to be on an even plane, you can water them all with one run of misters. With them being on that type of shelving system, it would be very difficult to water those accurately with an automated system. I used to have that same closet racking system in my propagation house and it made GREAT vertical use of the space, it also required me to water manually with a watering wand in order to ensure proper watering. It also will kind of depend on how much pressure your water source gets as well. Certain systems need certain pressure in order to run properly and not blowout. Here's my recommendation which can be modified based on your budget: 1. Get this timer and plug it into your water source. These timers run on a couple AA's and should last a year so this might be easier than a solar one (which are a lot harder to find). Also, you can spend more on a timer if you want one that might be more reliable/durable. Depends on your budget. 2. This is a complete kit that will give you what you need in terms of emitters for hanging plants (the drippers) as well as the streamers for larger potted plants (depending on how large the pots/hanging plants are). You can run main lines from the timer to the base of the greenhouse, then up the posts and run them horizontally along the edges of the roof (above the hanging plants and trays). 3. Then you can make vertical runs of main line down the side of the racking, with these emitters facing towards the wall of greenhouse (so you're not getting the rest of your space wet). Those emitters are installed in the same way as the others in the kit so other than purchasing the emitters themselves you wouldn't have to add anything additional. 4. Step #3 Caveat and Personal recommendation: When automating watering trays on racks like those, you will get more even watering if you are able to set them on an even plane and then just have a single header line attached to the roof above them with emitters. You'll likely get better results. Less trays/cells drying out due to uneven watering. So it looks like they're might be enough space to set them all on a single level of racking and then just have the header run directly above them and use these types of hanging emitters. They would hang right of the line of trays and provide really even, nice coverage. These emitters need to be spaced every 3', so you'll need to measure the length to accurately calculate and purchase the amount you need.
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Evan Barry
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@evan-barry-7532
Microfarmer + garden designer helping people grow more food with less time, space, and stress. A decade of professional vegetable growing experience.

Active 13h ago
Joined Aug 22, 2025
Illinois