By Lyn D. Miller

When the season is over and you’re putting your garden to bed for the winter, what are you going to do with all that irrigation tape? With most growers trying to keep costs down, using trickle tape for several seasons just makes sense. Pulling it up and storing it, though, seems to be a messy, time-consuming hassle.
Perhaps like many other growers, I was contemplating a way to speed this job up and have a practical way of cleaning the tape as I was storing it. A friend suggested some type of reel system and that spurred an idea. with a surplus of copper wire spools from the local electrical utility crew, some scraps from the iron pile and a couple of hand brushes, I felt that I had improved my situation.
The tape is fed through a smooth, polished slot and then between the hand brushes. this cleans and tensions the tape as it is wound onto the spool (not pictured). After carefully starting the first couple of wraps on the spool, you can turn the crank handle about as fast as you can, while guiding the tape so it wraps evenly across the face of the spool. When the tape is completely wound onto the spool, tuck the end of the tape under a couple of wraps and slip a 3-inch cross-section of truck inner tube over the wrapped tape like a rubber band to keep it from unraveling. Each spool will hold 60-75 feet of tape if you wrap evenly. Remove the crank assembly, then the spool with tape. Slip on another spool and you’re ready to go again!
A few design notes may be of interest.
•Note the small lug, located off-center on the inside of the crank assembly. It engages a hole built into each spool.
•The dimensions of the base are 11.5” x 10” and the spool support is 12” tall.
•The brush support and scraper slot support extends 11” from the base and is 5” wide.
•The crank handle is 6” from rotational center.
•A 5/16” wing nut is used to retain the crank assembly and threads onto 5/16” x1” stud protruding from the spool support.

Lyn Miller is the owner of Harmony Food & Produce Co. in Alliance, Nebraska. He can be reached at 308-762-6238 or lyn_miller@juno.com