One of my favourite garden chores is watering. There is something incredibly therapeutic about coming home from a hard day in the office to go out and take water to your thirsty little plants. And they look so pretty when they’re all wet and shimmery.
Problem be though, that this neck of the woods, like most these days, gets a little parched over summer. Kapiti doesn’t have a reservoir system. And with an aging population that believes it’s their god-given right to wash their car, fill the swimming pool and water their lawns in the heat of the midday sun – we have big problems with water.
More water talk after the jump…
I’m very careful with water. I use as little as I can and recycle most. I catch the water coming out of the washing machine and put it onto my plants. But I don’t like to use greywater too heavily on my food crops. So we’ve finally managed to find a tank on TradeMe to catch roof run-off. It’s an ex-food container, used to ship lecithin and perfect for collecting about 1000 litres of water for the garden. For NZ$120, it’s a bargain!
We’ve connected it to the down-pipe and used an old stocking as an insect guard. Thanks to a well-timed 24 hours of rain this week, we’re up to about 300 litres. I used maybe 20 guilt-free litres on the bottom vegetable garden last night with a misting hose attachment. My garden will be so much happier this summer.
Read more about rainwater harvesting at Wikipedia and take a look at some very cool designer water tanks here and here from TreeHugger. How Stuff Works has a very informative series on rain barrels.
What’s Your Water Footprint? U.S.
What’s Your Water Footprint? International
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