From Guest-Blogger Jessica: Seven Tips for Creating a Water Efficient Garden
In the summer months, water usage doubles. This is the season when people are outdoors watering their gardens and lawns. Due to this, it places stress on many water systems while increasing costs for water users and tax payers. With this, it is important for people to make their garden more water efficient.
This will also help individuals minimize their water usage and help their garden cope with drought conditions. These are a number of things that can help people create a water efficient garden.
1. Always Practice Proper Soil Preparation
The problem with many non-water efficient gardens is that their owners do not practice adequate soil preparation. Due to this, the absorption of nutrients and water is hindered. This ultimately results in plants that are wilted or not properly nourished.
To solve this, it is important for people to find out what type of soil they have. This is because different soils have varying water holding capabilities that can affect plant health. At the same time, gardeners can add organic materials. They can add compost, manure leaf mould and worm castings to their soil. It will effectively improve the drainage and air space within the soil. They can also add water saving crystals and soil wetting agents to help water remain and get into the soil.
2. Always Choose the Right Plants
Aside from not preparing the soil, a lot of homeowners choose the wrong plants for their garden. Because of this, these plants need to be watered all the time in order to survive. To solve this problem, they should choose plants that suit their garden conditions and soil. At the same time, they should find out which plants are best suited to their local area.
3. Mulch the Garden
A garden that is not mulched will have a much faster rate of water evaporation. At the same time, more water is needed in order to effectively penetrate the soil. Some of this water usually runs off to the side. However, a garden’s capability to retain moisture is increased when it is mulched.
At the same time, this helps control erosion, suppress the growth of weeds and reduce plant disease transmission. Materials such as compost, wood chips and bark can all be utilized as mulch material.
4. Always Have a Good Garden Design
A garden that is not well designed will not help retain moisture that will keep plants in good shape. It also does not assist runoff in a garden area that gets too wet. To have a garden that is well-designed, people should build mounds around shrubs in order to prevent runoff.
This also allows moisture to slowly soak into the soil around roots and the canopy drip line. Good landscape design also applies to pruning work. This is done by removing unnecessary leaves and lower branches in the garden. With fewer leaves, there is also less moisture loss. This also lowers the plants’ water requirements.
5. Always Understand the Garden
People who do not understand their gardens do not know the water requirements of their soil and plants. However, there is a remedy to this problem. Owners should work out what areas are shaded as the soil there has a good chance of retaining moisture.
People should also get advice and information from more than a single source. They should talk to local plant nurseries and gardeners in order to learn what plants are perfect for their soil and how to effectively take care of their particular type of garden.
6. Practice Proper Irrigation Techniques
Irrigation is very important in a garden. However, more water will be needed in order to supply all plants that are found in the garden when proper irrigation techniques are not practiced. This will eventually cause very expensive water bills.
By practicing effective water irrigation techniques, people can ensure that their garden receives an adequate amount of moisture while remaining water efficient. To do this, they should use a drip irrigation system or soaker hoses to water their plants once a week.
This also helps reduce the amount of water that is lost to evaporation. People can also reduce the amount of concrete or asphalt around the garden. This will reduce runoff while allowing the water to effectively soak the ground.
7. Always Use Soil Additives
One of the main problems of dried out soil is that it repels water. This ultimately wastes the precious water that owners put into it. With water retention products and soil wetting agents, people can improve the success of new plantings and water absorption in their garden. This is true especially if it is already dry.
Water crystals absorb water effectively. This enables roots to access moisture before the surrounding soil dries out. At the same time, wetting agents help water soak in and stay in the root zone.
