Fertigation Hell

Saturday was a mess. One block left to fertigate (spreading fertilizer through drip irrigation) and I sprung a leak. Water spurting out a hose jutting out the side of a burm. My worst nightmare.

I called it a day and was about to head out to San Francisco when I crashed for two hours. When your body has had enough you really can't fight it.

The city was exactly what the doctor ordered or maybe a what your cool uncle would have ordered. Pizza, boatloads of Irish Whiskey on the rocks, white owl's, a sweaty dance floor and a seat next to John Waters. Yes, the man with the pencil moustache. One of the six cult filmakers that revolutionized cinema in the late 60s (Jodorosky, Lynch, Romero, Sharman and Henzell). Standing up uncomfortably I yelled at B$ to share the pleather couch "Let the man sit down for Christ's sake!"

Sunday, I recovered with a mimossa and a day in Golden Gate Park for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival. I watched in awe as Billy Bragg, Mavis Staples, Neko Case and Old Crow Medicine Show rocked a park filled with families and dirty hippies coexisting symbiotically side by side. Only in San Francisco.

Monday I returned to the grind and the one block yet to be fertigated. Instead of fertigating though I put on my plumbers cap and loosened my belt and fixed the actual leak. As it turns out the random pipe emitting water was a "dummy pipe" and once capped the real leak began to gush from underground. Shoes off, pvc cement on for the diy plumbing show.

Today, it was back to the drawing board. Building head pressure with the pump I finally had pressure and water throughout the block. Happy as a clam I began the fertigation. Two hours and an empty mixing tub later and the fertilizer seemed to be flowing backwards through the filter.

What the hell was going on? Was my pump pressure on the fertigation tank more powerful than the one drawing from the creek? Was I pushing the water back into the source I was drawing off of?

Scratching my head as I drove to procure dinner (Tina's burritos and veggie sushi) I could only wonder: 'Maybe block seven doesn't go through the filter I am injecting into, but rather draws from the pipe heading to the filter.' In essecnce, I am injecting towards nowhere, or more literally closed blocks, thus the back flow towards the creek.

Crap! Duped again and clueless as to the setup I am working with. Just when you think you have it figured out, you realize that some jackass fucked up your day five years ago when he set up the irrigation system backasswards.

The only way to solve this problem is going Back to the Future. I hated the movies but in theory the concept can't be beat. Now if only I can track down some plutonium and a DeLorean. Iran might be a good place to start.