Reduce your garden's watering needs

Russet potato grown with no supplemental watering in woodchips

Do you want to reduce how much you water your garden?

Do you wish you could water your garden less? Even if you enjoy watering I'm sure there are other gardening tasks you could do with the time you would save. Or just sit back, relax, and observe the abundance of your awesome low water garden.

In my blog post 5 Ways to Transform Your Garden into a Low Water Garden I cover 5 methods you can use to work with nature so nature does the watering for you.

The methods are:

- Stop tilling your soil
- Garden with perennials
- Use mulch
- Block summer winds
- Create late-afternoon shade

In this post I'm going to discuss 1 of these methods and also talk about how soil holds water.

One method the blog post does not talk about is creating what is known as a hugelkulture bed (buried wood beds). These are great for reducing your water needs but for this post I'm focusing on what you can do to make an existing garden a low water garden.

You might be saying to yourself - Daron you live in the rainy Pacific Northwest, of course you don't need to water! It is true it rains a lot here but it all comes in the fall/winter. In 2018 over the course of May, June, July, August, and September my homestead got less than 1.5 inches of rain.

Despite only getting 1.5 inches of rain over 5 months, I only watered my garden twice in May just to get seedlings established. Otherwise I never watered and still got great harvests including those potatoes in the top pic.

If you live in a hotter and drier region you may not be able to stop watering but you can still reduce the amount of watering your garden needs by using these methods.

Are you ready to learn how to start transforming your garden into a low water garden? Let's get started!

Storing Water in the Soil



Healthy soil contains organic matter, (pieces of dead plants and animals, plus the millions of microbes, fungal networks, and bacteria that thrive in healthy soil) that increase the water-holding capacity of the soil. According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), every 1% increase in organic matter results in as much as 25,000 gallons of available water per acre.

So how does that translate to your garden?

It roughly means that for every 1% increase in organic matter in your soil you get the equivalent of 1 week of recommend watering (1" of water over the surface of your garden tends to be the go to recommendation).

If your soil had 4% organic matter you would have a full month worth of water stored in the soil! That is awesome!

These are rough numbers, but I'm using them to give you an idea of how much benefit you can get from increasing the organic matter content of your soil.

The key for the methods I outline in my blog post is to increase the organic content of your soil (no-till, and mulch), reduce the amount of water needed (Garden with perennials), and reduce evaporation of water from the soil (block summer winds, create late-afternoon shade).

Block Summer Winds


My new hedgerow during its first year that will one day be 15 feet tall providing privacy, wildlife habitat and block the summer winds.

Air moving over your garden can dramatically increase how fast your soil dries out. It is the same reason that a hair drier works so well - the heat is part of it but the moving air is critical.

Great for drying your hair, but bad for your garden.

But you can block at least some of the wind if you plant taller plants as a screen around your garden. If you are worried about getting too much shade from the screen then just move it further away from your garden. If you plant in the right spot, the summer sun is high enough that it will still reach your garden but the winds will be deflected up and over the garden.

To help figure out how far away the wind screen should be planted I recommend using this free tool: SunCalc.org

You can use SunCalc to figure out how far a shadow will reach for any object (just enter the height in meters) for any day and time. Makes it really easy to plan where to plant your wind screen or where to put a green house to make sure you still get winter sun.

There is also an app version you can download for you phone but I have not tried it yet.

You might be wondering what should you plant in your wind screen?

There are multiple options depending on what you like the best. You could go with a bunch of semi-dwarf fruit trees with some shrubs at the base to get a nice full screen. I decided to plant a bunch of native shrubs and trees that will get no taller than 20 feet to form a nice wind screen.

The native plants will also support a wide range of beneficial insects and birds that will help keep pests down in my garden.

Another option is to plant some taller vegetables like orach or climbing beans in the beds that the winds tend to hit first. These would also function as a wind screen though not quite as effective as planting trees or shrubs.

What ideas for wind screens do you have? Leave a comment below with what you would plant in a wind screen around your garden.

What Do You Think?


This young hedgerow is planted on the west side of my property. It will provide privacy and late-afternoon shade once it grows taller.

I would love to hear from you! Please leave a comment in this thread and don't forget to check out my blog post that this thread was based on. If you are one of the first to leave a comment you might even get a surprise in the form of pie or apples

The blog post covers the other 4 methods I mentioned in this post to help you reduce the amount of watering your garden needs. There is also a cheat-sheet you can signup to get on the blog to help you get started today.

Thank you!

What a great post Daron, Thank you for taking the time to post this information.

I would only add about the water retention in soil;
One of the things the USDA didn't really delve into about the organic matter content was how deep should organic matter go (below the soil surface) to get the maximum benefit of held water.
If you have any slope at all, once the water has traveled down past the organic materials it still has to go somewhere, usually it will find a barrier (could be rock or clay) layer and from that point it follows gravity.
This is how most springs are formed, and for those of us concerned with water both flow and holding it into our soil for plant availability, it is necessary to understand the mechanism of spring formation.

Why is this important to know? because if you did have that 4% organic material you mentioned and it was concentrated in the top 8 inches what happens to the water that continues past that top 8 inches?
If you practice total No-Till and want to increase your organic matter content you are not going to get your additions any deeper than that top 8 inches, it just isn't going to happen.
What will happen is that the "humus", that wonderful total break down of organic matter into small molecule sized bits which creates long term benefits to water retention, microbiome health, soil crumble (tilth) and worm attractant, will be what leaches deeper.
While this is truly awesome for soil building, it takes time for it to occur, which is why you can find quite a lot of writing about One Time Tilling.
True it is that you can get the same results but it will take far longer than if we help it along that first time, This isn't something you want to do even once per year, just that first time, and you want to be putting as much organic matter down deep as you can.
If you should be able to put that 4% organic matter from surface to 12 inches deep, then as the humus forms (it's a liquid) it will seep even deeper, giving your soil far more space to hold all the water the extra organic matter allows it to hold.

You can add organic matter strictly by planting deep rooting plants, then these have to decay and you are going to need to grow these plants for at least 3 years to get enough material down deep.
Daikon radish is well known for being able to put down roots up to 4 feet deep, but most don't mention that for the plant to be able to grow those super deep roots the soil has to be friable at least half of that depth.
I tried daikon in one area that had only 6 inches of "top soil" then came the second horizon which was heavy clay, the daikon put down radish root to a depth of 14 inches for the growing season (April thru October).
In another area, which had 8 inches of "top soil" followed by a loosened clay second horizon the daikon roots went down 28 inches for the same growing season.
My No-Till test area produced daikon of 10 inches long. This area has never been tilled, only mulched and cover crops that have deep roots (daikon, rape, alfalfa, crimson clover, buckwheat are the crops being tested in this area).

Redhawk

Thank you very much for your comment - I'm happy that you enjoyed it

You make a very good point about one time tilling and using that to get organic matter down deeper in the soil. I really like the idea of using deep rooted plants but I also get that if you have compacted soil it will be hard to get the same benefit.

When you did your tests with Daikon radish did you leave the radish plants in the ground to rot? I'm also curious - do you think they would grow deeper overtime if you planted them say each year for 5 years? I'm wondering if you start with poor compacted soil how long growing deep rooted plants would take to see noticeable changes to the soil below 8 inches.

Perhaps I will have to write a new post later on about using deep rooted plants to get the organic material down deeper. Would you mind if I take a quote from your comment and use it if I do write such a post in the future? I would link back to your comment and of course give you credit. I have a document with future blog post ideas and I think this could be a great topic.

Thanks for your great comment!

I've done three years of cover crops, including daikon every spring, all of the plants are chopped and dropped in the fall. In the three years I've managed to move the second horizon down to 18 inches in the no till test area, it started out with a 4 inch first horizon.
The daikon and rape have done a good job of pushing the second horizon down and those first year radishes have completely decomposed now (end of third year).

Feel free to use any of the information I've posted in my soil threads.

Redhawk

That is awesome - thank you!

Bryant RedHawk wrote:In the three years I've managed to move the second horizon down to 18 inches in the no till test area, it started out with a 4 inch first horizon.

That is incredibly encouraging!

Oops, I should have mentioned that I plant very intensively and then use scissors to thin (very early chop and drop) so the deep root plants are about 4 inches apart.
If the plant tops I cut off make a comeback, I leave them alone, since they obviously are determined to grow.
This year I tried to pull one of the daikon at mid growing season, I failed to get it to come out of the ground but did end up with a bunch of radish greens in my hands.

Very cool sun/shade calculator. Never seen one quite like that before. A fun new toy to play with during winter. Thanks.

Mike Barkley wrote:Very cool sun/shade calculator. Never seen one quite like that before. A fun new toy to play with during winter. Thanks.

You're welcome! Hope it proves useful!

Hey Daron Williams,

Thank you very much for your nice post.

Johann Jakob wrote:Hey Daron Williams,

Thank you very much for your nice post.

You're welcome! Thank you for the comment!

I did sweet potatoes last year for the first time, and when I harvested I discovered an astonishing root mass--not a lot of tubers (I wasn't watering too much) but a great deal of root, some of it half an inch to an inch in diameter. Whether it went deep, I don't know, but this year I planted a bunch of sweet potatoes just to improve my soil and get organics down there into the straight sand. If it works, I'll do a new area every year.

Thank you for this!! Everyone. This knowledge is like gold.
I just shared it with someone on another website from Spain whose area is struggling with crop failures due to drought and heat. Hoping I didnt overwhelm them with links.

I brought the horse to water, now hopefully.... you know...lol

Daron's posts are always awesome!  Great information coupled with excellent pics.  

Thank you so much for the nice comments Christina and Timothy!

I’ve read this thread three times now. I feel that my cover crop game is pretty strong but I also think I go way overboard on the organic matter. I tend to dump bagged grass clippings and shredded leaves directly onto my beds in the fall. I know the fertility has increased but I can’t help but think I’m smothering the soil and causing some damage. This is just a gut feeling and I could be wrong. Ive started piling things uphill from the beds for a couple reasons. The soil (clay) uphill is pretty rotten and not the least bit fertile. I’m hoping the humus changes that. Secondly I’m hoping the extra fertility flows downhill to the garden beds.
Do you feel that my uphill approach is just wasted time? Do you think I’d be better off going back to piling clippings directly in the garden for the winter? I feel like I may be suffocating the soil but could be wrong. Scott

hau Scott, As long as you are layering, or mixing, the leaves and grass clippings you won't have to worry about soil smothering, worms will come and help air infiltration. The mix of greens and browns will break down into humus material then sink into the soil, a great thing for the microbiome. Do not forget that gravity works, so up hill feeds down hill areas.

Redhawk

Lauren Ritz wrote:I did sweet potatoes last year for the first time, and when I harvested I discovered an astonishing root mass--not a lot of tubers (I wasn't watering too much) but a great deal of root, some of it half an inch to an inch in diameter. Whether it went deep, I don't know, but this year I planted a bunch of sweet potatoes just to improve my soil and get organics down there into the straight sand. If it works, I'll do a new area every year.

How did that work out??

I was thinking of doing that around my garden, as I have clay soil and a huge north facing down slopes hillside in my back yard. I have been moving yacon and Jerusalem artichoke around the garden successfully; but am now considering Sweet potatoes and ginger.

This was a great post! Thanks for writing and for all the great comments!!

Definitely adding some more logs and sticks to my raised beds this season. I am getting them ready this weekend. I have 2 yards of compost waiting to be added; in addition to a big pile of tree cuttings that have been seasoning in the back yard for over a year; and the neighbor is cutting down some redwood trees; so between the three, the beds will be super charged!

Hopefully I can get some of that redwood/pine mulch when they shred it before hauling off to add another 6” or so to the back and front yards again. I did that at the beginning of the pandemic when my neighbor cut his pine tree down. Seems to have been breaking down nicely; especially in my south facing front yard where all the fruit trees, perennials, and doggie activity is happening.

Dimitrius Brown wrote:

Lauren Ritz wrote:I did sweet potatoes last year for the first time, and when I harvested I discovered an astonishing root mass--not a lot of tubers (I wasn't watering too much) but a great deal of root, some of it half an inch to an inch in diameter. Whether it went deep, I don't know, but this year I planted a bunch of sweet potatoes just to improve my soil and get organics down there into the straight sand. If it works, I'll do a new area every year.

How did that work out??

I was thinking of doing that around my garden, as I have clay soil and a huge north facing down slopes hillside in my back yard. I have been moving yacon and Jerusalem artichoke around the garden successfully; but am now considering Sweet potatoes and ginger.

I had a good root mass in the areas I did this last summer. If I was staying here I could give you more of an update in the fall, but I'm selling the house.

The sweet potatoes themselves did great, with lots of above-ground mass. The problem previous years was that I didn't water them enough so most died. I need mass plantings in order to gauge the usefulness of the process.

As part of increasing my soils organic matter, I like to add plenty of mulch onto my growing areas. This could be leaves, grass clippings, chop and drop plants and even woodchips.

I don't know the science/math behind it, but woodchips do an incredible job at holding moisture. The deeper the layer, the more moisture seems to be trapped. While the top couple inches might be dry, it holds the moisture down low. The material eventually starts to break down and contribute to the soils organic content.

I love seeing how certain things flow into others. It is neat.

With much of these isles (I'm in central England) being in drought that started in March, this is so useful.

<quote> The methods are:

- Stop tilling your soil
- Garden with perennials
- Use mulch
- Block summer winds
- Create late-afternoon shade
</quote>

I am mulching more heavily with plant matter this year, and doing so much better with perennials than the annuals.  

One area where I am gardening desperately needs more organic matter (the soil is silty), for sure.

AC, the thicker you can mulch (up to 40 cm) the better the soil beneath will; hold water, increase in micro biome, supress new undesirable plants(weeds), aid in a fungal network which will provide highways for bacteria and chemical messages to travel to answer the call from your crop plants.
Love that you are following the right paths to great growing !

Redhawk

I find being up before the sun hits the growing beds helps the most. I water what soil needs watering by hand before the sun hits those beds.

I try to give the roots a chance to absorb what watering I can, provide individual attention, picking off insect invasions and bagging and disposing of those, adding debris to cover naked soil, moving weeds or grass as they begin to compete, but leaving the weeds as long as possible before they become green compost and mulch, or get transplanted onto squishy compost.

Recent transplants are visited several times a day, and extra watering is sparse at most.

I do use greywater when I can, alrhough its primary use is for cleaning. And I collect really a lot of rainwater, dispersing barrels around zones 0-2 relay style, to get rainwater to locations far from the collection roof.

Anything recently transplanted gets covered before sunlight gets intense, and salad goes in containers. I cover a lot of my edibles with wire cages, wire racks, plastic racks, milk crates and whatever else I can to deter the designer rats, because I am not using fencing to keep wildlife out. So I am growing intensive and in spots, on top of spent hay bales, as makeshift raised beds, with a fine lacing on them of compost and light high quality purchased garden soil. (Myco laced). So far this is working for me, and I take advantage of plants requiring less sunlight, like green onions and radishes, and grow them in partial shade.

Wood mulch up here brings out the snakes which my wife is deathly afraid of. ( She spent 3 weeks in the house the last time she saw one.)
We just do a deep root watering once a week.

Tom Walt wrote:Wood mulch up here brings out the snakes which my wife is deathly afraid of. ( She spent 3 weeks in the house the last time she saw one.)
We just do a deep root watering once a week.

I have areas where I use wood chips and areas where I use compost for mulch. The compose areas are where I don't want to run into snakes. That might work for you too.

Redhawk

PS, I have; copperhead, watermoccasin, eastern diamondback, speckled king, blue racer, and gopher snakes on my land.

The advantage of living in a rainy/cloudy country (the Netherlands). Only when I plant new plants I need to water (to 'water in' the roots in the soil).

Having mostly perennials (including fruit bushes and apple trees), using chop&drop mulching on the beds with annual vegetables and disturbing the soil as little as possible ... that's my strategy too.

Hi,
Thanks for your information. I live in Lanzarote, Canary Islands. Hot sun, hot winds, no rain. Couldn't grow anything for 10 years or more, until I did an online Permaculture course with Geoff Lawton and was hooked. I finally saw the light!. So, as the property was new (we bought 1000m2 in Nazaret) I quickly raised the garden walls with wooden pallets. That added 1,2m to the height. I planted acacias as my support trees (free, quick growing, nitrogen fixers, produce lots of mulch) (don't you just love it when something has more than 3 functions?) and began to plant fruit trees with a lot more success than previously. I dug a hole 1m3 for each tree and added with lots of compost to the dry dusty clay soil. I also planted a 8lt plastic water bottle close by. All these bottles are connected and I 'deepwater' my trees with them once a week from a 1000lt tank at the top of the property so they are gravity fed. The acacias also give shade of course. I also have another water system that allows water to be dispersed around the base of the tree, so that the fine feeder roots also get humidity. Deep mulching has taken place over time - I went through a black and decker chipper and a Bosch chipper before I got my hands on a Hansa. Expensive but well worth it.
So, the wooden pallets stopped the wind around the property (it still howls overhead on windy days though) and the acacias have lessened the intensity of the sun and helped reduce the impact of the wind chafing of fresh young leaves.
Back to the water supply. Water here is incredibly expensive and after using up your maximum of 20 tonnes per month of cheap water, it quadruples in price. Hence the need to save every drop. I diverted all grey waterfrom the bathrooms out onto the back garden. Luckily, the land slopes away from the house, so gravity assists naturally. The kitchen water gets used too, but I put that through a 'trough' I created using swimming pool liner and gravel. I made the container from pallets. the water first passes through a fat separator, then travels through about 2 m length of gravel (filled with compost worms which eat up all the gunk) Then it slowly trickles out onto the highest part of the garden where it drips incessantly. The washing machine water is also used, but that's in the garage under the house so it's the only water which requires a pump to get it up to the top part of the back garden. This water gets separated into several 'feeders' which in turn pour out the water onto day lillies, No filter system is needed and the lillies do fine. The fruit tress are a good 3m further down hill from this water, so I figure that by the time it hits them, it's clean enough.
Lanzarote has no natural water supply, it comes from a desalinization plant (hence the expense) It also contains a lot of chemicals (yummy) especially chlorine.  The water that feeds the 8lt bottles hidden in the soil by the side of the fruit trees, sits first for a week in a 1000lt tank, so that the chlorine has time to evaporate. I have no idea if it does, I'm just going on what I've been told is beneficial for the plants!
Finally, I collect all the rainwater I can off the roof - I have gathered/bought over the years a total of 10 1000lt square plastic tanks and if I'm lucky, they all get filled over the winter months. This water gets used during the especially hot months of August and September.
If I could think of any way to make my own water, I would!
So I have several different tap watering systems, the use of the grey water from the kitchen and bathroom
and the rain water - the pallets to protect plants from the strong winds and acacias to shade the land
but my water bill is still way too high!