In the massive weed patch that makes up our backyard, I did want to grow squash and other large plants. After I mowed, Joe tilled, we laid down a soaker hose and black plastic mulch. Today, I went to go water the squash and discovered that the hose had a hole and wouldn’t work. So I had to pull up the plastic mulch, get a new soaker hose, and then put everything back together. Hopefully the hose doesn’t break again. I do like using soaker hoses and plastic mulch on curcurbits, they do really well and there isn’t a lot of weeding.

Later update:

Turns out I haven’t even been using the soaker hoses. I found it isn’t too hard to just hand water with the water turn, and that’s how I’ve been irrigating everything. The only problem is there is only a small, less important part of my yard that is effectively irrigated by the irrigation turn, and I’m getting tire of having to water so much by hand. The worst is the lawn. I actually don’t mind watering the edibles and flowers. But I hate grass. I feel like it is a status symbol of how your landscape is doing, and mine is dry. I irrigated the park strip yesterday, for the first time this year. Even thought I don’t want grass there, I decided I better not kill it off until I’m ready to put something else out there.

Lawn only needs to be deeply irrigated once a month to not die. It needs a lot more water to stay green, but  I am not yet ready to give my nemesis that pleasure. I have decided to kill the lawn in my front yard though. No irrigation, and because it is a high traffic area, it is decomposing fast. It’ll look a lot better with whatever ends up there.