Are you a gardener that has an unlimited supply of water? If yes, you are lucky. In droughts zones, lawn watering and garden rules are very constrictive to the healthy growth of plants and gardens. Many people just give up knowing how few gallons of water they are permitted to use. Meanwhile, some of us have just found ways to cope with less water. To conserve water while still keeping it lush, there are many ways to optimize garden.
Some of the ways are drip irrigation, placement of plants and using compost or mulch. Drip irrigation is the use of a pipe or hose with small holes to gradually seep into the roots of the plant. Plants with equal watering needs are placed together to prevent wasting water on plants that don’t need it. Using mulch or compost is done to insulate the water and prevent drainage.
Taking preventive measures is one of the best ways to keep your garden alive during a drought. A drought will be predicted far in advanced occasionally, or a few weeks of heavy rain will occur after experiencing a drought. You should take the opportunity to set up several rain barrels when this happens. Many people think this is a silly thing to do and time consuming. But it actually hardly requires any work and can save you many gallons of water.
The hardest part is probably finding the barrels. Use your own garbage cans or go to your home improvement store to buy a few 55 gallon plastic drums. But before you go to the store, keep in mind that these can be expensive and difficult to transport. To filter out any unwanted leaves or debris that might fall off the roof of your house; you will probably want to cover the top of the barrel with a screen of some sort.
Now you have your barrels ready, but you’re faced with the decision of where to place them. Usually there is one corner or segment of the house that rain tends to pour off of during rainfall. Just place the barrel under all the places where you see large amounts of drips if you are taking the simple approach to barrel placement. However, you won’t see very high volumes of rain in the barrels even though this might be the easiest way to place them.
You should consider tweaking your gutter system a bit, if you want to take a more complicated approach to placing the barrels. You can place a rain barrel at each corner after you remove each individual segment and place it at a very slight slant so that all the water is diverted to the nearest corner of the house. So instead of just a few feet worth of shingles, your house acts as a catcher for the rain. It will maximize the amount of water your rain barrel will catch.
Each individual barrel probably won’t see very much rain after a heavy rainfall. It’s a good idea to empty each barrel into one main central barrel if it looks like it won’t be raining more any time soon. You can seal and save it for whenever you may need it. You’ll be able to quickly put all your catching barrels into place without having to lug around all the water you’ve accumulated so far when it starts to rain.
It might sounds like an ancient idea using the water barrels. However, it will be very helpful if you’re in the midst of a drought. Also, you’re able to spare that extra couple of gallons for your garden besides the city allotment. In the end, you’ll be grateful for every bit of time and money you spent on collecting all that rain. All you have to do is taking a few trips out in the backyard every time it starts to sprinkle. When water is abundant, you’ll be a very happy gardener.
Knonews 