My first gardener work

Hi there!

My mother A client told me that she was in trouble since she received an order from the municipality to stop irrigating her garden, because of the severe draught. She irrigates usually with a hose, and never thought that it would be possible to suffer restrictions in her house. I told her about the possibility of irrigating with grey water, and to implement a DIY dripping irrigation system to make the most of it. i could not convince her that mulching the garden would improve water retention as well, especially when I told how much it would cost.
So we did the following arrangement. I would install the deep drip irrigation system, and mulching two zones: one with potting substrate, the other with ground cover plants.

This garden is two years old. Plants survived this summer thanks to the massive hose irrigation. However, a few plants suffered frost a few weeks ago, and show burnt leaves. The order started last week. The client has been using gray water in buckets as much as she was able to figure out.

This is how it looked before any working.








Before the work, the client stated that she preferred to level the ground before applying any mulching, least the mulch go down with the tilt.
It rained the day before, so the soil was moist. Also, this dirt is mostly silt. It was a pleasure to work with it.
I loosened the surface first, so I could level the ground, but when I tried to level it, I noticed that there were far too much stones. These are partly debris from the building, partly natural stones of a hill. A few stones were being used as mulch around some plants.



I then offered to make a french dig against the wall, reducing moisture in the wall, weeds, preventing plants getting too close to the wall (that's too hot for most of them), and most importantly, I could put these stone to some use instead of carrying them out of the property.
Collecting the stones in the ditch was more labor intensive than I expected.



Once the beds almost cleared of stones, I could go on with the leveling. I could transplant a couple of plants that would have ended up buried, but one small plant escaped my radar and was lost in the process.





For the deep irrigation system, I cut a pvc pipe of 50mm diameter into pieces of 25cm. Then dug a hole and buried each pipe only 20 cm, leaving 5 cm above ground. The mulch is 5 cm thick, so the pipe ended up at surface level. These pipes are to be fed with plastic bottles that have a long neck which fits perfectly into the pipes, not needing any further support. Once the irrigation restrictions are removed, we plan to substitute the bottles with a proper dipping pipe.

This is how it looks after applying mulch.



We planted the living mulch later, but I finished very late and it was dark. so no pics for today.

More pics.

The client sent me this morning pictures of what we did late evening.

We planted Polygonum capitatum and the other one I can't remember the name, it's a replacement for the ice plant, less invasive. They are both to expand and cover an area similar to the one we've already mulched. The point is to compare the living mulch with the conventional mulch.
The client wanted also a couple of ivies for covering the wall.

As a note, the client was very angry at a nightwalking cat that ruined the smooth mulch of her garden last night.

Hello again.

Here we have pics of the job completed.
The mulched alley, and a detail of the watering system, at work.

Also, I convinced the client to install a compost bin. I made the ventilation myself.

I have to ask, is that a drip tray for the compost bin? I like the style you made, I never considered something like it. You will have to follow up with how well it treats your client!

About the compost bin, the client does not have enough space for a on-ground compost bin, and she required the compost bin to be located somewhere else where it is not visible (for aesthetics reasons, mostly). This creates the problem of dealing with lixiviates.
I solved it by raising the bin over concrete blocks, making just one hole on the side of the bin, close to the bottom, so the liquids can only exit from this hole. The 'tray' is just a small pot with no holes, but it fits well.
I gave her instructions to use this water as fertilizer.

We've installed only one bin, but I told her that we will eventually need a second one, once the first one is full and maturing.

Hello again.

This is another job. The client asked me to fix her flower bed so she can grow a few veggies. The soil was almost dead, completely compacted, hard clay. It had a few tiles as a way to reduce the slope.
My proposal was to till with organic matter, then make terraced no-till beds.
She already had one lemon tree and one peach tree in the larger flower bed, and wanted another fruit tree. I proposed a pomegranate tree and she agreed too.

This is my solution to the space. The log fence is still in progress. As you can see in the images, some space is lost for paths, but it is minimal, and in return it looks beautiful. Now it just needs to be filled with plants and veggies.