After a couple of years trying to grow the usual tomatoes, peppers & chillis.
This year I am going for the whole veggi garden bit, bought the books by Handscombe & started to prep the ground.
Still after some first hand experience, I have found the drip & sprinkler irrigation systems not that reliable ( coming from the pozo ) even with inline filters suffering a lot from blockage..I was thinking of trying the flood method, I have a small patch of garden prepared with a hump all the way round, any ideas how far apart to dig the ditches ?
Another thing, I have just dug out the bottom of the compost bin & rotovated it in & found some huge white grubs about 50/60 mm long & as thick as a finger, any ideas what they might be ? There is an absence of worms in the pile but loads in the surrounding ground, could it be the grubs have been living on the worms ?
Advice welcome.
Suzi

The grubs are from one of the species of beetle. You need to sieve your compost before use and any grubs need to be dropped in boiling water or squashed. DO NOT put the compost on your plants, these beetles live by eating the roots of any plants they find, they can survive as grubs for up to 18 months before developing into the beetle.

I know, I lost loads and loads of pelargoniums and other bedding plants to them this summer. A friend lost his entire veg plot a row at a time until he discovered them!

watering it depends how big your plot is, take a leaf from the local farmers, they either flood the entire field (wasteful) or use mounded earth around their trees and flood the inside. If your plot is not to big then flood it to about an inch deep with water, let it soak in and then repeat every couple of days until when you dig down about 3-4inches the soil remains moist.

Around our way the ditches are about a 9 inches apart, some are closer if the crop is fast growing like and small stemmed lettuce.

AArrh glad I asked about those grubs, I picked out all I could find. But there might have been one or two go into the ground, I will go pronto & sieve the patch. Keep your fingers crossed for me .
Plot is about 4m x 3m to start with. I have an old pergoda type frame I have fixed down, for fixing wind breaks & summer sun shades on to.
Don't think I will bother with lettuce, more like beetroot, chard, spinach. 9" ! Oops I started with 2' Oh well, got to sieve the soil now anyway so start again.

Thanks

Suzi

The grubs are good for chickens. If you have any of those let them root about in the compost, they'll soon dig them out.

When I first started I had a plot about this size and wanted to grow a variety of crops I connected the water to a lawn sprinkler and watered it that way which meant i could grow root crops and brassicas etc all in the same place. I went around some of the smaller huertas in town this afternoon and noticed these have a two methods of watering their patches, some have small areas like yours surrounded by a mound and then seem to flood the whole area with no ditches others have much smaller gaps in between their ditches than the big agricultural ones near us. ( we were flooded earlier this year and my chard, spinach , beetroot , dwarf beans etc were under water for 2 days with no ill effect!)So I think it depends on the crops and how much room you have as to how wide your ditches are.

Thanks, good tip but no chickens ( yet ). Although I might be able to borrow some :-)
Seems like a bit of trial an error on the water front then. Hadn't thought of a sprinkler might try that first.
Suzi