As a 10th generation city slicker (OK, I have only family lore to go by, which has it that my ancestors were given land in some faraway town by the then king who had established a new capital there in 1707), I had no experience of farming. Forget my own family, growing up, I didn’t even know a relative who had either lived in a village or had been a farmer. Only recently when I found myself reading up on irrigation systems, I realized how ridiculous the whole situation sounded. No, I wasn’t going to grow rice or wheat in a fit of survivalism. It so happened that over the last couple of years, the garden in my backyard had blossomed, largely due to the prodding of the family and to a lesser extent due to excellent help I can get around here. With some agricultural success behind me, I decided to extend my garden to the first floor terrace and eventually to the whole terrace of the two-storied house. I started with lantana (considered weed in some parts of the US, I was told) in large pots over the front part of the terrace, but soon realized that that part of the house was not very accessible for watering the plants. However, if I built a drip irrigation system for the plants, not only would it solve my problem but also that I would get to play with fun things like programmable water timers. That seemed like more motivation than enough and off I went farming. In a series of posts, I will write about what I have been doing to build a fully automated drip irrigation system.
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