Also, my father-in-law continues to have chickens in his retirement & I’ve seen the level of work he puts into their diet. The eggs from his hens are considered by many his his village to be among the best. Knowing a little bit of what it takes to not only get eggs, but get eggs that blow away what I can get from Riverdog Farm (http://riverdogfarm.blogspot.com/) at the Berkeley Farmers Market on Saturdays, I’m willing to pay the expensive $8 a dozen price because I know I couldn’t produce that quality at home at that price point.

We’ve entertained the idea of bees, but since we have a lot of European honeybees and native bees in our garden, we probably won’t end up doing that either.

I’ve been busy adding trees to my yard this summer because the previous owners removed a few too many. We’re thinking about joining the backyard chicken movement, but haven’t gotten started yet. Any thoughts on putting a coop where your giant pine tree once was?

-Sharkey

I do need to write up what my final take is on the Dramm vs. Chinese waterwand issue, but I’ll give you (and Jeff) a preview. Dramm products DO have higher levels of quality. They aren’t perfect, I do believe that there is a type of Dramm product that should be pulled from production, but if you are going to compare apples to apples, I can easily describe why Dramm offers a better product (with the caveat that it could be improved).

First let me apologize for the problems that you are having with the Dramm wands you purchased. We at Dramm, all 51 employees working in Manitowoc Wisconsin, will make sure you are completely satisfied. I am certainly glad that someone reading your blog felt strongly enough about our product to give us a heads up that you were dissatisfied.

Not having the chance yet to talk with you I can only draw from the clues you have on your blog. First the evidence of small hose are consistent with Galvanic corrosion. First let me start with the science from Wikipedia-
Galvanic corrosion is an electrochemical process in which one metal corrodes preferentially to another when both metals are in electrical contact and immersed in an electrolyte. The same galvanic reaction is exploited in primary batteries to generate a voltage. Dissimilar metals and alloys have different electrode potentials and when two or more come into contact in an electrolyte a galvanic couple is set up. A galvanic couple can also be set up on a single metal or alloy due to the metal surface not being homogeneous or if the electrolyte varies in composition, forming a concentration cell. The electrolyte provides a means for ion migration whereby metallic ions can move from the anode to the cathode. This leads to the anodic metal corroding more quickly than it otherwise would; the corrosion of the cathodic metal is retarded even to the point of stopping. The presence of electrolyte and a conducting path between the metals may cause corrosion where otherwise neither metal alone would have corroded.

Now the simplified version – Our wand is made of Aluminum and the lever is made of Zinc and our coupling is made of brass. If your water supply is high in minerals then that can add one more metal attacking another in this situation. If you leave water in the wand while not using it, it acts as the “The conducting path”. So our first step is going to be to ask you to just simply drain your new wands I am going to send you after you use them. Different parts of the world have higher and lower mineral content in their water supply and this can be the variable that is hardest for us to control.

Next is the plunger valve. Yes, you are correct that is the biggest challenge to keep from failing. We noticed from your pictures that you have the older version and the new version of our lever. The older version (without the DRAMM in the molding) had a plastic plunger with an O-ring on it riding in and out on the actual zinc cast material. As the metal changed it could start to prematurely wear on the O-ring, our test showed average of 28,000 cycles before failure with a flow rate of 5 gallons per minute. Three years ago we redesigned the lever. The new lever (with DRAMM in molding) upgraded the plunger to brass and inserted a high density plastic sleeve to prevent the O-ring from contacting the metal direct. This new version yielded us an average of 103,000 cycles before the O-ring failure and a flow rate of 11 gallons per minute.

Although the valve is much better I cannot guarantee that with you specific water supply that it will not still be our Achilles heel. We may find that you are better off with is quarter turn ball valve type of wand. I will include that along with the three lever valves I am sending you.

Please give me a call on Monday (my cell 920-… number removed before posting) and we can get the address where we can send your replacements. Several years ago we use to brag about how our quality defect rate was less the 3/10 of 1%. But then we started to think that if you only dropped 3/10 of 1% of all babies in a hospital would that be acceptable? The answer is clearly NO. And if we are going to survive as a manufacturer in the United States we can’t drop any of our babies (wands). I took a survey at the factory in Wisconsin and no one wants to work for $8.00 per day like our competition. However, we do want to make sure the you are completely satisfied with everything that DRAMM has our name on.

Thank you in advance for giving us a chance to work with you.

Jeff Bucher
General Manager
Dramm Corporation, Manitowoc Wisconsin

Regarding the fertilizer question, if you take manure from the pasture, it needs to be cured before it’s put on the garden. There a lot of information out there on curing manure and what different types of manure can provide for the garden. Here are a few:

1. Vegetable Gardener web site
2. Gardenguides.com
3. Thriftyfun.com

To fertilize my garden I use my own compost from 2 composting bins (when the economy was better, local government subsidized these for residents) and I use organic fertilizers I buy in bags at a nursery. I have gone as far as to buy several single ingredient organic fertilizer components and then mix them myself, but after doing that one season I decided to just buy the pre-mixed organic fertilizer as a time saving measure.

You should see the inclusion of Grow Italian in the gardening links page as of today.