Water dirt?

[HoneyBerry]

This may seem like a strange question. When I water my garden, should the surrounding dirt that has no plants be watered? I usually supply most of the water just to the plants and leave the surrounding dirt dry, or just spray less water on the surrounding than on the plants. Sometimes there are weeds in the surrounding dirt, and water is expensive, and I don't like wasting water on weeds. And it is warmer and drier than usual, so we are supposed to be conserving water. But doesn't the dirt need water to keep the beneficial organisms alive? What about the compost bin? Should the compost bin be watered, or should I just let it dry up until the rain comes. Water used to be so plentiful around here, but things have changed. Water is precious and it needs to be used wisely. I used to think that the dirt got plenty of water on it's own because it used to rain so much. But the climate has changed. I can't count on the rain anymore.

[Lindsaylew82]

I wouldn't water the dirt that's not currently being used. I've watered my compost heap though. But not with any religion.... I say make the weeds unhappy, and save your water!

[applestar]

We have water restrictions in summer, but within the limitations -- assigned days and hours -- I water the entire bed in drought conditions -- otherwise, the little bit of water immediately around the plant will just get robbed and sucked up by the rest of the earth.

Almost all of my garden beds have what I'm calling "swale-paths" -- low dug areas that hold water in a puddle that soak into the mounded raised beds and rows.

[Lindsaylew82]

Almost all of my garden beds have what I'm calling "swale-paths" -- low dug areas that hold water in a puddle that soak into the mounded raised beds and rows.

Same here.

[rainbowgardener]

If you want your compost pile to keep working, you need to water it, when conditions are dry enough to water your garden. If the compost pile dries out, it stops working. That's not a disaster, when it gets moistened again, it will start up again. So you have to decide if it is worth it to use the water to have compost.

Are there sources of gray water you could be using? Save the water you boil pasta in ... If you do canning, save the canning water after you are done. Put a bucket in the shower, to save the warm up water. Do you have rain barrels? Depending on how much you are willing to do, your washing machine drain hose can be connected to a bin to collect the gray water and so can sinks.

If you are concerned about water conservation (and we all should be!), you shouldn't have "dirt." Mulch, mulch, mulch. And you talked about "spraying" the water. Drip irrigation is much more water conservative than hose spraying, puts the water right where it is needed. Drip irrigation systems are not difficult nor very expensive to set up. But short of that you can easily make your own drip irrigation feeder for big plants:



If you put sand in the bottom third to half of the bottle it helps slow down the water seepage. No water is wasted!

[HoneyBerry]

I like the swale paths idea.
My ex-neighbor - he moved away - used the buried plastic bottle idea for his tomatoes. He used empty bleach bottles. I guess the bleach residue was not significant?, at least he wasn't concerned about it..
The weather sure has changed. I never thought that it would be so warm and dry here in rainville. I haven't seen a slug for a long time. I wonder if we still have slugs at all around here. There are so many critters that I don't see anymore - ladybugs, butterflies, frogs, grasshoppers, those cute little orange moths, slugs, robins, dragonflies. Only a few bumble bees show up now. There used to be more bumble bees.

[digitS']

With so little growing season rainfall here, garden irrigation is important to me.

More generally, there is change and uneven variability, microcosm and continent wide. I'm nearly equal distance from your unusual warm and dry spring, Colorado's and Wyoming's snowstorms and tornadoes, and Alberta's wildfires.

Last year, unusual and record heat left me wondering where the butterflies had gone. There is this small area near one garden where Admirals are almost constant visitors, year after year after year. I didn't see one there in 2015. There sure seem to be less robins this year and I have not seen an admiral yet but other butterflies are showing up.

I water large gardens in a not-very-efficient way - sprinklers. Most of the ground has 4" field pipe and sprinklers. Fortunately, there is a good aquifer in this valley, charged by the 100% of normal winter precipitation.

Somewhat between our locations, Birdlover, there are springtime wildfires. Central Washington had such devastating fires the last few years. The 100% plus winter snowfall doesn't seem to have helped all that much in delaying the fire season. There must be a lot of damage to the natural environment from several years of drought and heat.

I try to put 3/4" of water on the gardens twice a week. Here is not "rainville" but an arid part of the West with an average of 1" of rain each month, usually from a couple of minor storms. The soil drains quickly.

Path swales, eh? I guess I have those . About half the gardens is in beds and about 2+" of soil was moved from paths to beds. The lateral movement of water - hope so! The paths are fairly well packed down and the bed soil is loose.

My compost is made in several locations. The one in the garden receives water once a week from the sprinklers ~ 3/4". It is semi subterranean in that it is about 8" below ground level. Of course, most of the time it's mounded above.

My garden beds are not mounded. They are flat with soil and rocks raked to the outside perimeters. I imagine that there is less runoff into the paths, that way. I'm still hoping for lateral movement of water that falls in the paths.

I think that if I had an even more arid environment, I would use the Zuni gardening bed design:

zuni_gardens3.jpg (54.67 KiB) Viewed 1298 times

Steve

[HoneyBerry]

I've never heard of Zuni gardens before. I will have to look that up.
I just have a small garden. I use sprinklers too. I guess it isn't all that efficient, but the sprinklers seem to work pretty good for watering the grass. I'm trying to become more efficient with water use in general, so I'm looking for new ideas. One thing good that I do is I maintain a compost pile alongside my berry mound. I think that the berry bushes get some of their water from that (Honey Berries).
The wild fires are what I am most concerned about. I think about the drought and the dry trees and grass and then I hear about a wild fire wiping out an entire city in Canada. It's hard to not go crazy just thinking about. It is frightening. I agree with you, that there must lingering damage from the drought in the forests. Some people say that my world would be brighter if I stopped reading the news, but I can't seem to do that. I like to know what's going on.

[HoneyBerry]

I saw something in the news recently about an ancient Peruvian irrigation system referred to as the Nazca Holes - a system that uses sophisticated hydraulics for retrieving water from acquifers. If you haven't seen the news piece yet, I suggest that you find it and read about it, digitS. It is amazing.