Water, Water Everywhere...or Is It?

Some photos of my garden today. Chervil in bloom; squashes, pumpkins, and beans coming up! We continue to eat lettuce, spinach, radishes, rhubarb, chives, and chervil.

Roses are just beginning to bloom and do they smell wonderful!

But let's spend some time talking about water.......

Water clear, water bright,
Is a friend that's worth the having;
Water clear, water bright,
Serves us all from morn 'til night.

A kiddles song

The human body is approximately 70% water! Can you believe that we are made up of so much water!? The Earth is considered a water planet. About 70% of planet Earth is covered in ocean. Maybe that is why healthy oceans are so important! Only about 2% of the Earth's water is fresh. Some is locked up in Polar ice caps and glaciers; some is underground in aquifers and wells; some is in rivers, lakes, and streams; and some water is in the air and in the bodies of living organisms like you and me and our garden plants!

Clean water is our most important natural resource. Our bodies, our cells, would not work well without access to clean water. We would not last very long without water. With the changing climate, water shortages and droughts are becoming more common and causing large populations of people to have limited or no access to drinkable water. Yet we take this very important resource for granted. Have you ever seen someone shave, brush their teeth, or wash dishes or their hands and leave the water running? Or have you ever done this? How simple an act it is to turn the water off rather than leave it running. The amount of water on our planet is very limited so it is very important to treat it with respect and conserve it whenever possible and that includes watering our gardens. Many people believe that clean water and our access to it is what will be the largest issue of our time. I know energy is THE issue of today but water will become just as much a central issue as energy is. As well it should.

Well speaking of water, it's been dry here in central Maine and watering the garden has become a mission. I shamefully admit that in the past I have used a sprinkler to water my gardens. In a typical summer I'd use it once, maybe twice, so I didn't take the time to work out a better way to water my garden. Until now. I finally bought a soaker hose to see if I could work through this watering dilemma.

Soaker Hose

It worked great! But there are some issues. The hose I got didn't "weep" like I thought it would. The hose I got from Home Depot for $10 squirts water out of many tiny holes that are throughout the entire length of the hose. That surprised me. I quickly realized that the water pressure needed to be very low. When I turned the water to very low the soaker hose worked better. The squirting water wasn't shooting over the tops of the plants like it was before I turned the pressure down. Yet not all the plants looked like they were getting water but I decided to just leave it and see what happens. When I returned 30 minutes later to look, the entire asparagus bed was thoroughly wet and the moisture went down the soil several inches. That was nice to see. Advice online says that many folks who water their gardens this way have a soaker hose in each garden bed (or row) and leave them there the entire season. The "traditional" main hose is then moved from soaker hose to soaker hose to irrigate the garden. I must admit this sounds easier than moving the soaker hose from bed to bed or row to row.

Here is a series of video clips to show how to set up a soaker hose:
http://www.ehow.com/video_4427687_determine-best-way-use-soaker.html
But there are other sites that explain this as well.

What I found is that when I opened up the hose it needed a bit of stretching and pulling to get it to uncoil. As I laid the hose down I realized I needed something to hold it in place so I used a rock here and there to hold it down with holes facing the direction I wanted. And I positioned a few sticks to guide the hose. The second time I used it (in my strawberry bed) I didn't need to do either of these things as the hose didn't keep coiling up. It worked just as well in the strawberry bed as it did in the asparagus bed. But to be honest I want to try one of the hoses that the man mentioned in the above video clip.

Here's a picture of the hose in the asparagus bed after the soaker hose had been on for 30 minutes. The soil was fully saturated. Another thing is that when you use a sprinkler you tend to have the sprinkler on full blast but with this hose I barely had it on a trickle. The label of the hose says that it saves water by 70%.

When I came in from setting up the soaker hose I had my typical Sunday cup of coffee and read the Boston Globe. Look at the article, Concerns are rising on water overuse, that was on the front page today!
Available at:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/06/07/in_mass_concerns_rising_on_water_overuse/
Can you believe that many Americans use between 65-170 gallons of water per person per day! Doesn't that just seem obscene to you!? It sure does to me.

I will address water and water conservation useful for gardening throughout this blog all summer long. So stay tuned to more about water importance, usage, and gardening watering conservation tips.