Garden Know-How: Wise Watering
(Page 2 of 3)
June/July 2007
By Barbara Pleasant
Sprinklers are fun to use, but depending on weather conditions, half the water that runs through them can be lost to evaporation and runoff. Occasionally there are good reasons to use a garden sprinkler. If very dry weather hits just as corn shows its silks and tassels, or when tomatoes are in full bloom, a late afternoon sprinkling session will increase overnight humidity levels and enhance pollination by making it easier for pollen grains to fuse with waiting ovaries. Sprinklers also are great for providing moisture for seeds planted in broad blocks, a cover crop of buckwheat, for example. Watering by hand is more efficient than sprinklers, but doing it right eats up hours of time.
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You will need to have a standard garden hose at the ready for spot watering, but your best bet for general watering chores is porous soaker hoses that slowly weep water into the soil, or drip lines that emit water in tiny trickles. Either will efficiently distribute water exactly where it’s supposed to go, with little or no waste. You can put a simple system together as you plant your garden, and change the location of the soaker hoses or drip lines as crops come and go. For maximum versatility, limit the length of soaker or drip hoses to less than 50 feet, and install pop-in connectors to the female (incoming) ends of each hose.
Soaker hoses and drip lines (see illustration in Image Gallery) depend on pressure from a faucet to push water through them, but if you have a little elevation to work with, you may be able to set up a gravity-fed bucket drip system.
To supply water to plants outside your drip lines or soaker hose network, punch a few small holes into the sides of plastic milk jugs or kitty-litter jugs an inch from the bottom, fill them with water, and let them drip their moisture into the root zones of thirsty plants. The water that remains in the bottom of the jugs, below the holes, will keep them from blowing away. (See illustration in Image Gallery.)
HARVEST THE RAIN
Mother’s online Archive includes in-depth articles on using graywater (slightly dirty water from bathing and cooking) and for collecting roof runoff in cisterns and rain barrels, but harvesting rain for garden use can begin in the garden. As long as you’re hoeing out weeds, use your hoe to create shallow furrows along planted rows to detain rain that would otherwise flow into pathways. In similar fashion, you can make raised rims around beds to create a basin effect. Should you get too much rain, one decisive swipe with a hoe or spade will open the earthen floodgates.
You also can collect rain in containers stationed in or near the garden. Last summer when my neighbors downsized their herd of cows, I gained use of an oval-shaped 50-gallon stock tank, which partially refills itself with each passing shower. The sun-warmed water is great for rinsing dirty hands or washing pots, or for dipping out to pour on parched plants. Maintenance is limited to dumping the tank often enough to interrupt the seven-day life cycle of mosquitoes, or adding mosquito-killing Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis, an organic pesticide) doughnuts to the water.
