New here, awesome setup,good thinking ahead fellow gardener 🤩looking forward to seeing your harvest definitely a win win,keep up the great work👍🏽watching & learning from zone5.
Thanks :) When the plants in the raised beds are still seedlings then yes, we need to water. After that, the plants send their roots super deep (bonus) to find the water down at the level of the trails. Even then, it just reduces our watering needs but overall it still works very well. I suspect there is a good degree of pure 'wicking' going on (try putting the tip of a dry dishcloth into some water at the bottom of the sink, and draping the cloth uphill of that - biological material has that capillary wicking ability to draw upwater uphill - free-energy antigravity technology :) ). Same goes for the mycelial network that is super thick throughout the whole woodchip trail. The vegetable roots and fungi will seek each other out, so that they can interface (like electrical socket and prongs) and the fungi will trade water and other nutrients to the plants which provide sugar to the fungi. Win-win and biological anti-gravity irrigation again :) Even during last summer's 2 month long drought (zero rain) the woodchip trails were like a wet sponge once you dug down just a few inches. Very cool :)
New here, awesome setup,good thinking ahead fellow gardener 🤩looking forward to seeing your harvest definitely a win win,keep up the great work👍🏽watching & learning from zone5.
Thanks :) Where are you writing from?
Great video! My question is how do your raised beds benefit from the water in the trenches? Do you still have to water them?
Thanks :) When the plants in the raised beds are still seedlings then yes, we need to water. After that, the plants send their roots super deep (bonus) to find the water down at the level of the trails. Even then, it just reduces our watering needs but overall it still works very well. I suspect there is a good degree of pure 'wicking' going on (try putting the tip of a dry dishcloth into some water at the bottom of the sink, and draping the cloth uphill of that - biological material has that capillary wicking ability to draw upwater uphill - free-energy antigravity technology :) ). Same goes for the mycelial network that is super thick throughout the whole woodchip trail. The vegetable roots and fungi will seek each other out, so that they can interface (like electrical socket and prongs) and the fungi will trade water and other nutrients to the plants which provide sugar to the fungi. Win-win and biological anti-gravity irrigation again :) Even during last summer's 2 month long drought (zero rain) the woodchip trails were like a wet sponge once you dug down just a few inches. Very cool :)