Thinking about saving water for your garden this year?

Here in Pine Cove, many residents like to garden and even grow some of their own food. Now is the time to start thinking about spring projects and what you can do to conserve water in the garden.

If you have an existing garden, there are several things you can do to reduce the amount of water you use in the garden. First, be sure to add compost to your existing garden. Soil that is high in organic matter stays moist longer. Improve your soil by adding a source of organic material such as compost or well rotted manure. If you consistently work to improve your soil each season, the texture and water holding capacity of your soil will increase and your garden will require less water. In order to make this easier for you, we have wonderful compost available to our customers for free!

Once you have freshened your soil with compost, it is time to add some mulch. Mulch aids the garden in several ways. It adds a source of organic material which and will eventually improve the structure and the water holding ability of the soil. Mulch slows surface evaporation so you will water less and it helps to smother weeds, making your gardening easier! As it happens, we also have mulch (Wood Chips) available to our customers for free as well!

One wonderful thing you can do to help keep your garden looking good throughout the summer is harvest rainwater. Rain water is FREE water. Just catch it and store it then use it. You can search for rain water harvesting online and find a ton of helpful information and lots of examples on how to set up rain harvesting system.  By using your roof water you will reap water benefits from even a gentle rain by capturing all of the water that falls onto your roof surface. This can be as simple as a rain barrel under your down spout or shallow trenches to divert the rainwater to the garden.  Adding berms strategically in the garden will keep the water form running off. You can even go so far as to install a large water storage tank either above ground or underground in order to store thousands of gallons of rain water. 

Installing a drip irrigation system will deliver water directly to the plants root zone instead of watering the entire surface of the garden. Although, a drip irrigation system can be expensive initially it will certainly pay off in drastically reduced water use if you intend to grow a  garden year after year. The hoses, emitters, fittings and valves must be laid out to deliver the water to each plant. If you can’t afford to install a drip system,  an easy alternative is to use soaker hoses that allow water to seep through the porous material along their entire length. Soaker hoses are less expensive to install and you can put them under the mulch to prevent evaporation.  Both methods are better alternatives than sprinklers or letting the hose run.