Watering Your Garden
Water Crystals – High Tech
One way to cut down on the amount of watering you’ll need to do for your plants is by using Water Crystals. These are super absorbent polymers in the form of white granules – also called hydro gels, polymer crystals, or water gels.
These water gels reduce watering requirements for shrubs, trees, and lawns. They help prevent stress in your plants in times of both drought and excessive moisture. They also help irrigate crops and trees, turf grasses, lawns, plants and flowers in gardens, containers and nurseries.
Rain Barrels – Low Tech (but still one of the most efficient watering methods)
If you want to go less high tech, having a rain barrel or even two can help you immensely with your watering needs. But since the theme of this article is using technology – how can you incorporate technology into your water barrel? Well, the easiest way is just with that simple technological marvel, the spigot, which you can affix to the exterior of the barrel. In this way, you can keep the rain barrel uncovered during periods of rain, but covered at all other times (which will help prevent the birth of mosquitoes!), and fill your watering can from the spigot when it comes time to water your plants.
With the right kind of rain barrel, you can have it set up so that you can use it to run through your sprinkler, or automatically water your plants. You simply hook up one, two or even three barrels together, so that you have a sufficient amount of water to use. And of course during those weeks when there’s no rain, you’ll still have your regular tap water to depend on to water your plants and lawn.
On the other hand, why use a barrel, or even connect three of them together, when you can use a cistern?
If you’ve got enough space, consider building an underground cistern, of concrete, which can hold thousands of gallons of water. It’s not necessary to go underground, of course, but it does help, aesthetically speaking.
Do some research into the advisability of using rain barrels or a cistern in your location.
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This great “technology” that was added to my garden over 30 years ago, is terrific and works wonders in “saving our water” and lowering our “water bills.” Which makes my hubby very happy! I use my rainwater for over 20 different projects from watering my Victory Garden to flushing my “inside very modern toilet!” I’ve been told there are over 70 uses for rainwater.
Here in Florida, my rain barrels stay full most of the year, so my resources of usage is great. I would like to suggest that folks who participate in rainwater harvesting by channeling rainwater from their rain gutters into their rain barrels, would do well to keep those rain gutters squeaky clean. The cleaner the gutters, the cleaner the rainwater going into the barrels or cisterns.
Most folks hate cleaning rain gutters as it can be a very dangerous, often dirty, and always a tiresome job. We’ve learned to keep our gutters extremely clean all year long, even with 3 oak trees and pine trees dropping debris all year. We are using the newly invented method of vacuuming our rain gutters of all debris be it wet or dry, while staying on the ground. No ladders needed and no water used. Save more money by not having to use water to clean them out and get all wet while we do it. This great new tool is called the Gutter Clutter Buster and it can be seen on line.
We encourage others to check this out and see if it would serve them as well as it has us. So, keep on keeping on and be conscious of the fact that “Water is a Precious, Priceless Commodity.”