Even though we get a lot of rain here in Washington, I still have to water the lawn and garden as the weather warms up. I am always looking for ways to save both money and water out in the garden.
Here’s 10 tips to keep money in your pocket AND keep your plants and lawn happy:
- Water before 9:00 a.m. Watering before the heat of the day helps reduce evaporation.
- Put a layer of mulch around plants. Mulch helps retain moisture, lessening the frequency of watering.
- Collect rainwater in a rain barrel or container. There’s tons of really cool rain water collection kits or you can make your own.
- Your lawn only needs about 2.5 cm of water once per week. You can measure how much your giving your lawn by leaving a cup out during sprinkling/watering. Scale back if you are overdoing it.
- Choose garden paths that are porous. Use gravel, bark, etc. for garden paths, that way run-off water is not wasted, but returned to the ground and surrounding root systems.
- Group plants with similar watering needs together. If you have really thirsty plants, keeping them all in one area will eliminate the need to over-water plants in other areas.
- Do not bag your lawn and raise the blade of your lawn mower. Allowing grass clippings to compost right into the lawn provides a layer of mulch and nutrients. Raising the blade of your mower in the heat of summer protects grass roots from heat and shades them from premature water evaporation.
- Aerate lawn in early spring or fall to improve water penetration.
- Make donuts around your plants and trees, encouraging water to pool where it is needed most.
- Water slowly. Turn hose or sprinkler on low in order to give water time to soak into the dirt, rather than running off where it is not needed.
Do you have any great tips for saving water and still having a happy, healthy garden?
~Mavis
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Betty AD says
Id read this somewhere…those gallon milk jugs are good to water areas that are hard to get to …..fill it up and put a pin hole in the bottom…and near roots of plants….it will slowly leak into the ground…..might give this a try and see how it works….
Kendra says
If you manually turn on and off the water (as opposed to a timer), don’t forget to turn the water off 🙂 Many times my plants have been watered 2-3 times as long as they need because I went back inside and forgot to turn it back off.
Brandy @ The Prudent Homemaker says
How different your water is where it rains 🙂 We get 2″ of rain a YEAR here, and on Saturday it was 114º (and we were out digging for the front yard garden). If we don’t water every day our grass will die. Even if we do water every day we have to make sure to water enough times per night (we water at night here in the summer; in a few months our low temperature will be between 102º and 106º).
We water on a timer, except for pots, which have to be watered by hand every day, or in 3 days they will be dead. Everything except the grass is watered with drip irrigation.
When it does rain here, the raindrops evaporate off of the ground almost immediately, so the ground doesn’t really get wet. It’s interesting watching it in July on the day that it rains (usually there is a day in mid-July and a day in January when it rains).
We cut our grass taller in the summer, too. It’s time to remind my husband to move up the blade if he hasn’t done so already.