“Un”wasting the kitchen water

Going back months if not years now, there used to be a big pipe buried beneath the bigger veggie plot, where all the water from the kitchen and the utility room would flow into. At some point everything got clogged and stopped flowing as it should. With no good solution in sight and not knowing exactly where the pipe was buried, we had a handy-man come up to help us out. The first step was to cut through the section of the pipe that was visible and closest to the garden. We soon found the problem then. The whole pipe was full of dirt and other stuff that stuck together.
So I dug out the whole pipe, cleaned everything out and made a new one. Unfortunately that one didn’t last too long either, as it was thinner than the one before. It was a rather quick fix that just didn’t last! For the time since then, which was months ago, the water pipe was disconnected and just flowed out into the land.
As you can imagine, a huge waste of water, thinking that it should be used to water the plants we actually want, as opposed to the weeds and grass that need cutting all the time.
Today I made this work again, although only temporary. Because the tomatoes were all nicely planted already, I decided to just run the pipe along the side of the plot instead of “through” it. I thought it’s better that way than having all the water chucked out into nowhere. After digging up the trench where it would be laid into, I put the end of the water pipe coming from the house, into the big pipe that was now a temporary watering system 🙂 The tomatoes that were planted in the pots are now serving as a partial cover for the buried tube. The other bits were simply covered with earth and stones.
As soon as the tomato plants have finished their cycle and have been harvested, this veggie plot will get a major make-over and I will look for a more permanent solution for the watering situation. The best would be to have some kind of filter before it goes underground. That way all the little food bits that (almost) inevitably get washed down the sink, would be caught up in the filter, which we could periodically clean out.
Until then, let’s hope this solution gives the tomato plants the extra boost of wetness they really need during these hot summer months.