{"id":29998,"date":"2022-08-21T17:33:53","date_gmt":"2022-08-21T17:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/intranet-old.colart.com\/en\/?post_type=cgt&p=29998"},"modified":"2022-08-24T13:16:36","modified_gmt":"2022-08-24T13:16:36","slug":"sustainably-watering-your-garden-in-a-draught","status":"publish","type":"cgt","link":"https:\/\/intranet-old.colart.com\/en\/cgt\/sustainably-watering-your-garden-in-a-draught\/","title":{"rendered":"Sustainably Watering Your Garden in a Drought"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sun has definitely shone with great ferocity this year and keeping the garden alive takes a lot of time whilst using a lot of water. With a hose pipe ban in our area looming I’ve automated the watering of our garden to reduce our water usage and take away the daily toil.<\/p>\n

Typically watering the garden takes around an hour with a hose which equates to around 1,000 litres of water. That is a lot of water, equivalent to around 13 baths or 28 shows or 1759 pints of beer (should you fancy the challenge). As we are on a water meter that amounts of \u00a31.91 per day in cost or \u00a3119 across the summer months and 36kg of CO2 emissions.<\/p>\n

The trouble with watering with a hose (or worse still a sprinkler) is that it is incredibly inefficient as it tends to wet the body of the plant with only a small percentage reaching the roots where it is actually needed. Most of the water that hits the leaves tends to evaporate off and can often cause mildew to form on the plant. You also end up wetting areas of soil away from the base of the plants which provides little benefit. As a result of this unless you are tremendously targeted with your hose action, around 75% of the water that leaves the hose effectively goes to waste.<\/p>\n

The solution I have gone with is to lay porous soaker hoses across all the beds, carefully laying them so that they directly deposit water onto the plants root systems. You only need to cover 50% of a plants roots for them to be effective. Soaker hoses are very efficient as water is directly dripped onto the soil surface and can quickly soak away meaning that you need to use a lot less water.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Soaker hoses slowly drip water onto the surface. By running them close to plants you water only the areas which need it.<\/p><\/div>\n

The soaker hose connects back to a regular hose that goes back to an electronic timer and pressure reducer on our garden tap. This ensures the system is only on for the minimum amount of time required to water the garden (typically 15-20 minutes). We have programmed it to come on late at night to minimize evaporation losses.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Timer units turn the watering system on at set times of the day. They also can look at weather reports to understand if watering is necessary or not.<\/p><\/div>\n

As a final step in locking the water into the soil we have a layer of mulch on top of the soil that keeps the weeds down whilst locking in the moisture. We used a hard wood mulch (tree surgeons often have a ready supply if you need some) as soft wood tends to soak up water reducing the impact of your watering. Currently our hoses are on the surface but when we re-mulch this winter we will bury the hoses in the mulch to further reduce any evaporation loss. (Note you should never bury the hose in the soil as it will stop working)<\/p>\n

\"\"

In pots and containers the micro irrigation system waters individual plants<\/p><\/div>\n

For our pot plants we use a micro-irrigation system which consists of small 6mm pipes and small drippers that water individual plants. As with the soaker hose this comes on via a timer to ensure minimal water usage.<\/p>\n

\"\"

To measure our water usage we have installed a Hozelock water meter.<\/p><\/div>\n

As a result of this change we save around 60% of our water usage saving u to 37,000 litres of water over a hot summers like the one we are experiencing.<\/p>\n

Cost wise:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • the soaker hose was \u00a375 per 100m of hose<\/li>\n
  • the micro irrigation system around \u00a325<\/li>\n
  • timer was \u00a328.<\/li>\n
  • water meter (optional) was \u00a330<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    This means it will have fully paid itself off within 2 years.<\/p>\n

    Setting up took around 3 hours in total and after a little planning into where to place the hose, was very simple to do.<\/p>\n

    The final great thing with the watering system is that due to their efficiency, most water suppliers allow them to be used during a hosepipe ban as long as they are operated by a timer and a pressure reducer is fitted.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Typically watering the garden takes around an hour with a hose which equates to around 1,000 litres of water. That is a lot of water, equivalent to around 13 baths or 28 shows or 1759 pints of beer (should you fancy the challenge). As we are on a water meter that amounts of \u00a31.91 per […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1853,"featured_media":30001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","cgt_type":[697],"class_list":["post-29998","cgt","type-cgt","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cgt_type-story","post","post-with-thumbnail","post-with-thumbnail-large"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intranet-old.colart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cgt\/29998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intranet-old.colart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cgt"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intranet-old.colart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cgt"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intranet-old.colart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intranet-old.colart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29998"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/intranet-old.colart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cgt\/29998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30230,"href":"https:\/\/intranet-old.colart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cgt\/29998\/revisions\/30230"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intranet-old.colart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intranet-old.colart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cgt_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intranet-old.colart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cgt_type?post=29998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}