Water Your Garden Without Turning On The Tap
Actively and continuously needing to water your garden is a sign that you may have overlooked some simple but powerful water harvesting techniques. Here are five ways to water your garden without turning on the tap.
1. Plant Your Water Before You Plant Your Garden
Most people decide where they want to plant and then try to figure out how to get water to it. That’s backwards. Before putting a seed in the ground:
- Spend time observing the landscape to determine how water interacts with it.
- Plant your garden where your water will be, or
- Develop strategies for bringing the water where you want it to go.
Identify the high and low spots in your garden. Where is it wettest after heavy rain, and where does it first dry out? Knowing how water interacts and moves across your landscape is the first step in designing a garden that doesn’t need as much watering.
2. Store Water In The Ground
Rain barrels, sprinklers, and micro-irrigation are great ways to store water, but they’re far less effective than storing water directly in the ground. Organic matter is a crucial ingredient in storing water in the soil. No gardener has ever complained about having too much organic matter in their soil. If the garden is too dry, add organic matter to hold onto water when it rains. Add organic matter to soak up the excess water if a garden is too wet. Organic matter is the great equalizer. With enough water in the landscape, you can even mitigate extreme temperatures.
3. Change Your Garden’s Topography
As demonstrated in Brad Lancaster’s video above, it’s possible to capture literal tonnes of water by changing the shape of your garden. One strategy is to establish a rain garden. A rain garden is a planted basin designed to slow down and capture runoff from your house and yard. Epcor has a good guide for designing and installing residential rain gardens.
Before installing a garden bed in my front yard, I dug a 100+ foot level trench called a swale to collect water from my downspouts and bring it to my fruit trees and front garden bed. The level swale is a very long and skinny rain garden that pacifies and spreads water along its entire length. The swale is then mulched over with wood chips and other organic matter before being planted on top of and directly beside. Mulched over and planted, nobody will know that there are water harvesting features under your garden.
4. Mulch and Plant Your Garden
The soil is the best place to store your water, but it’s vulnerable to wind, sunlight, and erosion. Protect your soil with organic mulch, such as wood chips or straw, and heavily plant. Avoid exposing your soil for any length of time. The gardener’s obsession with exposed black earth is the soil is the last thing you want.
Check out ChipDrop to see if they operate in your area. ChipDrop connects local arborists with gardeners looking for mulch. A word of caution, when you request a load of woodchips, you will get a truckload of woodchips. Since moving into my home, I have mulched the entire yard twice, front to back, with four inches of chips.
In addition to protection, mulch breaks down and feeds the soil – adding organic matter that holds water like a sponge. Reapply mulch regularly. I add a few inches of leaves gathered from my neighbours each fall.
5. Don’t’ Treat Your Soil Like Dirt
Avoid walking on your soil by creating dedicated paths and building beds that are accessible. Walking on soil compacts it and destroys important channels for water and oxygen. The more you step, till, and dig, the less healthy your soil will be. You want your soil to be light, full of organic matter, and moist enough to hold its shape when squeezed loosely.
6. What Comes Out Must Go Back In
It’s easy to forget that harvesting one pound of vegetables removes a pound of water and nutrients from your soil. Over time, this will deplete the organic and nutritional content of the soil, that’s so important for water retention. One solution is regular mulching; another is tending a compost pile and top-dressing your beds with compost each spring. I add a few inches of compost to my vegetable beds and directly sow my seeds; no tilling is required.
7 Become a Winter Snow Farmer
Just because the water isn’t liquid doesn’t mean it can’t be harvested and put to good use. In fact, snow farming can increase water, protect plants, and even boost your growing zone! Want to learn more? I wrote an entire article about why you should start snow farming.
Take The Ecologically Inspired Garden Design Course
If water harvesting and ecological design interests you, consider joining the Shrubscriber Community and taking my five-part Ecological Garden Design Course.
