I wrote about so many things in that post, and probably too quickly, because I had one foot out the door. As a result, parts of different stories might have blended together a bit. Also, having no time for illustrations meant that some details of the bed construction were difficult to describe both quickly and accurately.
My seedling setup was very simple. It consisted of in-ground beds, for example, approximately 40' long and 9' wide with seedlings spaced at 9" running the length of 8 rows. The only thing special about those was the 40' run of leaky-weepy irrigation hose along each row. I had them connected in parallel via a simple PVC manifold. Water delivery rate was adjusted by a ball valve, because if over-pressurized, the leaky hose can produce random needle-sized jets which could reach up to 3' away.
The two 4x8 super-beds were for registered cultivars, and I had to build them root, rot & gopher proof simply due to their proximity to the eucalyptus. Because of their size and expense, plus the labor involved in building and filling them, failure was not an option.
The injector was a fine bit of engineering genius I discovered in the 80's—The Young Products M-P Mixer-proportioner, manufactured in the East S.F. Bay area and still a favorite of mine. Unlike common and affordable consumer-grade siphon-type mixers, it presents practically no water flow restriction, and more importantly, the concentration of chemicals delivered remains constant until the concentrate tank is empty, unlike most of the hose-end sprayers. Mine has a 2-gallon concentrate reservoir, they also offer a 5-gallon model. Either one can be permanently installed in a watering system, or connected into a hose line, which is how I use it. The mixing ratio is adjustable, to suit various chemicals and dilutions. I sure pumped a heck of a lot of Rapid-Gro through mine in the old days. Interestingly, I had never even heard of it before mail-ordering it from A.M. Leonard in Piqua, OH. Many years later when I needed some spare concentrate bags, I searched the internet and finally discovered that they're manufactured about 30 minutes from here.
http://youngproductsinc.com/mi...
