6 Clever Ways to Water Your Garden In a Drought

It's no secret that pretty much all around the country right now, you may not be getting enough rain. There might even be drought restrictions on the ability for you to even water your garden or your lawn. So in this video, I'm going to give you six different strategies to drastically reduce the amount of water you're using in the garden while still getting incredible results. The first thing you need to keep in mind is the method you're using to apply water to your garden. In this strawberry bed here, I've got drip irrigation, which if you had to rank them, drip is going to be the absolute highest as far as water efficiency. Because what's happening here is the tape is applying water directly to the surface of the soil. It's dripping down. It's not being sprayed all over the place as well as it's getting right at the root zone of these strawberries, of the sunflowers, of the squash, of everything out here in the front yard. We've done a couple of different videos on how to set up various drip irrigation systems for raised beds, for in-ground in the backyard. In fact, we just put some in on a new blackberry patch and a new tomato patch. The reason why you really want to do this is because you're going to save a ton of water. You're paying for that water. And actually all of us are paying for that water if you really think about it. We want to conserve as much as possible. So drip irrigation, whether it be in-ground or in raised beds is fantastic. But if you don't have either the skillset to set it up or the budget to afford a kit like this, then you can use a passive irrigation system that Jacques is putting together in his garden right now. When it comes to saving water in the garden, one of the biggest things you could do to impact that is to make sure that your plants are only getting what they need when they need it. So what I have here in my hands is an Oya from Dripping Springs. This is the smaller version and we also have the larger one here. This one will be showing you how to install it in a grow bag after this. But for now I want to focus on the small one because the small one is really versatile for fitting into different little sections of your garden. And in particular, it's fantastic if you have a small area of your garden, that's not on irrigation, but you want to make sure that it has consistent watering. So right here I have this kale patch. I have three kale plants, which are conveniently planted in sort of a triangle. And so what we're going to do is we're going to dig out a hole and bury this in there. What that's going to do is it's going to save me the trouble of having to build irrigation here. It's going to save me a lot of water because otherwise I'd have to use a sprinkler or overhead water it for a very long period of time to make sure it gets enough moisture. So now let's go ahead and dig out a hole and talk about exactly how to use this right here. So the way that an Oya actually works is by being a very porous clay material. What that does is as you're watering it and it makes contact with the soil underneath, the soil will actually act as a sort of natural wick and pull the water out of the pot as it dries out. What that means is that as the plants are growing around it, they'll end up wrapping their roots around the Oya because they're going to recognize that that's a viable source of water. So this does a couple of different things. First, the two different sizes create a passive watering buffer area. I believe this one does something about, um, 12 inches or so away from it. So you basically get a full circle that's two feet in diameter of watering. And so what happens is that whole area is now going to stay consistently moist, which is going to make the plants very happy. It's going to cool the soil at the same time. Since I'm going to be burying this under mulch, it also means that the water is not going to be able to evaporate out of the surface because most of that water is going to be pulled underground exactly where the soil is. So it does a lot to actually save you some water. And it also just makes life easy because then I'll only have to come by here and basically check this Oya if it's full maybe once a week or so. Now that we have the hole in place, all we have to do is bury our face in the soil here and I'm going to leave the lid on while I bury this so I don't get any soil inside. But this is the real beauty here of the Oya is that once I bury this in, all that's going to happen is I'm going to come through, fill it with water, and it's going to now passively irrigate all three of these kale plants perfectly. So I'm going to take this lid off. Once it's full, you kind of, if you fill it up to this point, it doesn't really do anything for you cause it's just going to evaporate since it's above the soil. But then you throw your cap on. Now we have perfect irrigation in this area right here, but let's go take a look at another use case for the bigger Oya in a grow bag. So in this section of my garden, it's actually a driveway. So this is sitting on concrete right here. This is a large grow bag that has a bottom. And the problem with this section of the garden here is that I just never watered it. It was so far away from the garden and out of my mind that I often planted things here and they just died. So the solution is to put this giant Oya in. So this is the large Oya which can water anything from like three to four foot radius or sorry, diameter. So this is about a three foot bag and I plopped it right in the center and all around it, I've planted a couple of different lettuces. So I have little gem and Jericho and to make this a fully automated watering system, I did a very deep mulch layer here. So we're looking at at least two inches across the board here. And all I have to do now is once a week, come by, take a look inside. If the water level is low, fill it up, but that's all there is to it. It's really a great solution for a part of your garden that's off irrigation or out of your main view. And it makes passive watering really easy. Another awesome strategy that will also give you a lot more harvest is to plant biointensively. Plant a little closer together. What that's going to do is act as effectively an edible living mulch. Right here I have squash. The squash is of course going up this angled trellis here, but these huge leaves on the squash are also buffering that sunlight. It's not even going to hit the surface of the soil. We've got some arugula, some lettuce. It's all planted pretty intensely here, which means I'm going to get more yield, especially if I'm actively managing this bed. You know, if you plant closer together, you do have to come in, make some pruning cuts, make some harvests because it's just a little bit more crowded. So you get a living mulch effect by planting intensively, but you also can't forget the actual benefits of properly mulching a bed. So let's head on over to the backyard and I'll show you what's up. Now we talk about mulch a lot here at Epic Gardening cause it's quite honestly one of the most powerful things you can do for the health of your garden in general. But if you really are struggling with water restrictions or just lack of water in your environment and you want to conserve, it is hands down the most powerful technique that you can use. Obviously you can see here this tomato bed has a ton of shredded straw mulch. We particularly like straw mulch because number one, it's light colored, meaning it's actually going to reflect more heat off as well as it's nice and sort of airy. When you put two to three inches down, you get a nice buffering effect along with the reflection effect to keep the soil nice and cool and also reduce evaporation. The one thing I'm going to say is if you do notice that heat's coming in and drought's coming in and water restrictions are coming in, you want to make sure that you're very liberal with your mulch. Now if I wipe this away here, I could say I have about an inch down. If I know that I can't water my garden effectively, then what I need to do is double or even triple that to two, three, four inches of mulch. So what I might do here is I might just dump an entire bag across and re-spread this over. Most gardeners tend to under mulch. Like you can go to some gardens, you brush this away, do that, and it's bare dirt. So it's almost as if there's not a ton of effect there at all. So overdo your mulch. Now you don't have to use straw. Some of the most effective and free stuff you can use is wood chips. You can get it from Chip Drop or call up local arborists and they will drop it at your door. Ask me how I know. I've probably taken five different drops of over 40 cubic yards to cover my property with wood chips here. And it's still not enough. So bury it nice and high and make sure you're very liberal with your mulching. A counterintuitive tip that will help your watering requirements in the garden is to transplant more and direct sow less. And even more than that, make sure that your transplants are nice and sizable. So let's take a look at my seedling table here. I have plants of all different sizes. There's some young tomatoes here. There's some much older tomatoes hanging out right here. Now in an environment where I don't have as much water as I might like, the smart thing to do is to transplant in. So start seeds in a system like this instead of going over to the garden and direct sowing. And here's the reason why. Let's say I have these tomatoes. I want to direct sow the tomatoes. Well, I have to manage the health of those seedlings as soon as they start coming out of the ground. And I pretty much have to overhead water that bed because I need to make sure that the sensitive roots don't die out. This goes for carrots. This goes for things like radishes, et cetera. You get the point. You need to overspray that garden. Now in this system here, what I have is a controlled environment. So what I've got is I have our Epic four cell trays right here. For example, I've got a bottom 10-20 propagation tray with no drainage holes. So what I can do is come in and fill the bottom of this with water. All of that water is going to get sucked up through the bottom holes here into this soil and perfectly, perfectly irrigate each of these hundreds of different cell growing sites. What that means is I'm using way less water to grow a seedling up to the point at which I can actually throw it out into the garden and it can support itself and maybe can even run off a drip irrigation setup where I don't need to just spray over the whole garden. So this is weirdly one of the bigger tips. If you're starting a lot of seeds, make sure you start them in a system setup like this, grow them up. So even this cucumber right here in the Epic four cell, I might even want to pot these up into a three or four inch pot before I bring them out into the garden. And then I put them right next to my drip system or my efficient irrigation system and pop it in. It's crazy how much this tip will save. The final tip I have for you is the most arduous to set up, but also probably one of the most rewarding in the garden when you finally do have it running. And it would be rainwater and gray water collection. So I've done a pretty Epic job here at my house. Certainly use this maybe as inspiration and do the method that works the best for you. But just to show you what's going on at my house, what I have is a gutter system. I have a flat roof that kind of all comes off the back of my house. And so it all runs down here. There's a filter right there. That's going to get all the particulate matter out. It's dropping down into a pipe that actually runs underground to quite a absurdly large system I'll show you. This is my 5,000 gallon rainwater collection system over here that actually right now is full to the brim. And I've purposefully not used it because I know when am I going to need the most water guys in the summer when it's unlikely to rain and when water prices might be high or when the drought restrictions might be in full effect. So I'm not saying everyone needs to go out and get a 5,000 gallon cistern, but I'll show you something you can do for pretty much any budget. So in this artichoke patch, which is looking a little sad, it's actually time for artichokes to flower and be spent and be pruned down. But nevertheless, what you see here is a 250 gallon rainwater tank coming off of this right here. Same sort of setup, the leaf filter, the first flush filter, but I'm collecting 250 right here. Now again, this is a little bit more intense of a rainwater barrel than most of you will probably be able to find or source. But I would say this, check with your city. Almost every city in California has a rebate on setting up a rain barrel system as well as a gray water system. And what I mean by gray water is water that's been used once in your home in a non-toxic way applied to the garden. So what you can see here is three little outlets. If you look really closely down here, you can see those. And then what you see when you look at the side of my house right here is a pipe coming out of the side of my house. So what's, what the heck is going on here? This is a laundry gray water system. It costs about $400 or $500 to set up with a professional. Very simple to do. You could even do it yourself. And I got a rebate on it. So it didn't really cost me that much money at all. All that happens now when I do my laundry is my water comes out into this artichoke patch and I never ever water this, guys. Now I do have to change my laundry detergent, but that's a topic for another video. We've done full install guides on both gray water and rainwater on our Epic Homesteading channel, which I highly encourage you to check out if you're looking for more conservation and self-sufficiency topics. But guys, this is sort of a pivotal time I feel like. Are you at your house producing something, anything, a little bit of produce, conserving a little bit of energy, a little bit of water, or is your house just a suck of energy consumption, et cetera? I think it's a good time in history and in this exact moment to be a little bit more of a producer at home, grow your own food. That's what we're all about here at Epic Gardening. So I hope these strategies help you for managing a drought and managing water in your garden a little more effectively. And until next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.