Does anyone else use micro irrigation systems? As my mother who (except for some greenhouse salad stuff which I do) is the gardener here grew older, watering became more and more of a chore so we switched to this stuff. It's worked out pretty well.
The vegetable plot, small greenhouses, etc. round the back might be of interest. We collect rainwater from the roof of the house and from a shed in the field. There are 12 x 200L butts in total. One group is about 30M from the other - they are connected by a run of 25mm plastic pipe.
I use a solar panel set up and a pump to water this area. I chose a marine fresh water pump (they are used to pump fresh water to taps, etc. on boats) to do the pumping. They had a reasonably low power consumption (unlike some of the "water butt" pumps I looked at) and have the big advantage that they work on demand - turn a tap on and the pump starts up. This enables easy usage of standard battery powered tap timers.
I use 4 station Sunmate timers. These allow me to split some areas into smaller sections, helping to conserve water and keeping the demand on the pump and the battery lower. We don't use the automatic scheduling part of the timers but do make use of their ability to water a station(s) for a given length of time. It's sort of push a button to set the watering going. This rainwater system will usually carry us through dry spells and enable say a weekly dose of Phostrogen to the veg plot and/or the Vitalink stuff I use in the greenhouses.
We use one of those Dosatron injector things for the fertiliser - I have one on a trolley. I did look at the cheaper bag things but they didn't really suit or requirements (I think you usually have to empty the bag in one watering for starters). With this one, I can change the container of fertiliser as require and change the dilution ratio. I have 5L containers of "concentrated fertaliser" (eg. say 1Kg of phostrogen in 5L of water) and worked out a table on a spreadsheet that gives what I need to set the Dosatron to to bring my concentrate down to the correct dilution.
It's a bit expensive. In fact the whole project for our smallish areas has been expensive but when you consider, the whole thing was done over 10-15 years with bits added or modified as required and that the set up has contributed in some way to extending my mothers gardening years in some areas, it's probably not that bad.
I think we are on a winding down period now though. I've no interest in taking on the main gardening although, while I'm here I'll try to keep a supply of fresh salad stuff for as long as I can. My mother is slowly but surely replacing squares in the veg plot with fruit trees.