Ways to get water for low cost/free to offset costs?

Hi all, I've heard that growing your own vegetable garden doesn't offset the costs of buying them in store, due to the price of water. Is this true? If so what are ways to get free water if any, such as collecting rainwater etc so it becomes worth it in terms of cost as well?

Thanks!

If you live somewhere with rain at least once a month in the growing season, you can minimize water needs with healthy soil.  Really healthy soil would probably be fine without irrigation as we go 4 or more months between rainfall and a large amount of our fruit and veg are grown irrigation free.

Whoever is saying you need a lot of water is probably gardening the hard way.  That high irrigation method was very popular in the 1970s and 80s.

Our community garden has one water tank that is fed via a natural stream and in very dry years, we may run out of water for a week or more two or three times over summer.

Most of the gardeners have water butts on their plots to collect rainwater, we mulch our plants with arborists’ ramial woodchips, pea straw, wilted comfrey leaves and/or the tops of the cover crops that have been grown onsite.

We leave a few plants to self seed so that we can replant seeds from crops that are adapted to our climate and growing conditions.

There are many crops that are expensive to buy but relatively easy to grow ourselves - here in NZ, garlic costs up to $60/kg; saffron; asparagus and fresh herbs are all easy to grow, don’t need a lot of water and are tastier and more nutritious than what is sold in shops.

To me the benefit of growing your own vegetables is not the money you save, instead it is the benefit that the vegetables taste so much better.

Using compost, wood chips and mulch help, too.

And every gardener can easily set up a water catchment system to use to water the garden.

There are other techniques to make watering more economical if that is important:

https://permies.com/t/138768/Water-Plants-Trees-Drought-Conditions

https://permies.com/t/40/58559/Big-Fat-Thread-Dryland-Farming

Greywater can be used if you don't use any nasties in the house.

If you have a season with plenty of rainfall you might be able to grow more veggies during that season.

Choosing less thirsty veggies to grow will also help, as will selecting varieties that were bred for drier climates.

Mulch will help to conserve moisute in the soil so less frequent watering is needed.

I grow a lot of prickly pear cactus that doesn't need any additional water. It gives me fruit in the late summer and early autumn and pads to use as vegetables in the spring.

I've started a mini-hugel in front of my house. Hugels are full of rotting wood, which acts as a sponge to hold rainwater. Paul's hugelkulture article is very helpful and shows how you can use free wood to keep water available to your plants.

Mulch! Lots of it. Any kind, but lots of us are having success with wood chips.  And biochar! It holds 3-4 times its own weight in water.

I get rainfall through the growing season here, but it gets noticeably drier and in most years decent dumps are few and far between from about January to March (when the crops need it most). When I switched to no-dig methods and started using deep mulch and biochar, the need to water during the summer went way down and now it's only to get new plantings established, or if there's a really dry spell.

Suzzane, nothing is free other than love, sometimes.
Even collecting water has a cost, tanks, pipes, valves etc.
I think I have never heard the comment 'water is expensive ' ever, so some more details will help.
I am experienced with rainfall collection and use, so I can help.
But what are you calling 'expensive', what are your expectations?
What is the rainfall annually in your location?
There are many water saving techniques, are you familiar with them?

Starting seeds in place rather than transplanting will help establish plants that are ready to develop a relationship with the soil.  It’s not always practical but, two examples:  lettuce, let  it go to seed, and let the seeds get distributed all over your plot.  In the late winter, or I should just say, at some point the conditions will be achieved in which the seeds will germinate.  It won’t be when the instructions on the seed packet say to plant them.  Now you have a solid covering of lettuce plants.  Any place they are in the way, harvest them, have a salad.  The lettuce will germinate even under the snow.  By the time other weeds would like to germinate, they can’t, the lettuce is already there.

Second example:  sunflowers.  The packet says plant after the soil has warmed.  What I have observed is that sunflower seeds will germinate long before you expect.  The secret is to have a lot of seeds so that some will find their way into warm little crevices between clods or chunks of wood chips.

If the seeds germinate in place, they don’t have to undergo the shock of transplanting.  Their roots find their way where they need to be.

Learn to recognize cotyledons of plants you grow and common weeds.  

Lastly learn your edibles:  lambsquarters for example, and amaranth.  They’ll germinate and grow and feed you, and won’t expect copious quantities of irrigation water.

John C Daley wrote:...Even collecting water has a cost, tanks, pipes, valves etc.
I think I have never heard the comment 'water is expensive ' ever, so some more details will help.
...

In my town, our municipal water bill has risen considerably in recent years, partly the water rates, and also a four-fold increase in the "delivery fee".
The water rates are a tiered pricing (up to X volume is one rate, from X to Y is a higher rate, from Y to Z is a higher rate still.) and the combined billing for water and sewer is based off our water usage. Higher water use = higher sewer fees.

In our particular situation, our farm property has water, but no sewer, and since the town offers no exemptions we end up paying the water and sewer fees, to have water for irrigation.

Kenneth, I have worked for water boards, I have seen that type of charging system and it usually works well.
If you reduce water consumption you get a small saving, but as the deliver cost increases, the savings diminish.
I consider it a sneaky way for accountants to ruin the incentive to cut water consumption.
I have approached water suppliers to discuss the crazy system they have and it has worked.
It seems unfair to charge for  sewerage if you have none.
But what are your circumstances, are you a farm irrigating paddocks or are you watering a vegetable garden?
No sewerage in Boston, that would be considered strange, surely?

I live in an area with high rainfall, and the local water works has been charging me for serviced on a vacant lot.
They have had various claims as to what services they are providing, but storm water run off abatement is one of them, even though I have no active connection to their system.
I'm not paying them, but they keep billing me.
Obviously I'm not a fan of them for this nonsense, but they do easy up on the 'sewage multiplier fee" in the summer when outside water usage spikes, which is not nothing.

I think diverting rainwater  and grey water away from the sewers and into mulch pits/paths is the easiest way to save on gardening water costs.
Mulch for both storing and filtering the water.
I have diverted rainwater from one outbuilding into storage, but it is not well utilized.

If you can use rainwater for your household, and the household greywater for gardening, you will have minimal water bills.
Despite many half baked plans, I have never succeeded in doing this.
If you are not a scatterbrained weirdo like me, the biggest impediment to doing something like this on a household level  is storing the water.
A used above ground pool would be plenty big enough but might be a hard sell to anyone less than obsessive about water independence.

Wiliam, I am interested in your story.
I worked in the water industry as a Civil Engineer, I designed new pipelines, managed repairs of urban systems etc.
In Australia the system works like this;
- A community decided hey wanted water.
- An investigation and trial study would be carried out.- If feasible ansd water board was set up.
- That board gazetted an area it would supply based on research.
- If you were inside that area your were obliged to contribute collectively.
- A design was carried out, works costed and approved, water supply set up and operating.
- All properties that had a water supply available to it were obliged to pay fees whether they used water or not.
- Since most rural towns wanted water, connections happen quickly and usage fees are then charged.
- Rarely was water taken past farm land etc that might not normally wish for a town water supply.

John C Daley, we have a small farm on a undeveloped parcel in a residential zone, in a suburb of Boston. The farm has a water service, but without any building there is no sewer connection to the sewer in the street. I think that years ago, when it belonged to my partner's father, there may not have been a sewer fee. There was a period of years after his passing that no water was used at all, before we began taking water again. Somewhere in that time the town must have decided to charge all customers for water and sewer, with no new accounts just for water without sewer (while possibly honoring existing water-only accounts in continuous service? which our lapse &/or change of ownership may have severed.)
Our residence is on an adjacent/abutting property, and if not for the farm water service and piping already existing, we might just as likely have extended the water for the irrigation from our home. Then at least we would not be paying an *extra* sewer fee... We could have operated our own meter on the irrigation, and calculate a portion of the total cost for the farm. Unclear if combined with the house usage, if the total usage would place us in the highest rate tier? and then if we would end up paying as much, just in a different way, than two accounts at lower usage but with the doubling up of fees...
Having a separate account and meter does make the accounting for the farm usage easier.

Ironically, (and comically) the farm has two easements for 3 enormous municipal sewer lines that connect to the main sewage treatment plant in Boston.

Kenneth, what do you actually farm there?
Are you close to Deal Island, I had a look at the treatment system it is different.

A source of 'free' water collection is that which falls on roads and paths. Even unpaved roads can collect rainwater, which if safely diverted could be stored in the ground.

Depending on the scale of your growing spaces, free water can be gathered by just leaving out a bucket/open container outside to collect rainwater. Rain is generally plenty during my growing season but I have a few placed containers to capture rainfall. If needed, I can dunk a small bucket into these sources to bring the water to the nearby plants.

I'm proud to say this season that I did not turn on the hose bib once, I either let the rain do the work or I hand watered from these sources. It takes a little bit more time, but it is pleasurable work.