Video: Water Conservation: Gardening in a Drought

water conservation, grass mulch
water conservation, drip irrigation
We use drip irrigation in our vegetable garden. It’s a great way to conserve water.

For this week’s video, I felt water conservation would be a useful topic. After all, so many regions — within the United States and around the world — are dealing with severe drought conditions.

While this is a depressing subject, my video is filled with positive, actionable items we can address in our gardens. Some might seem obvious while others cover things we’ve probably forgotten about. Or we overlook them because we’re so focused on the day-to-day tasks of growing plants.

Monitoring your garden on a regular basis is one of the most important things we all should do. Why? Well, from a watering perspective, you’ll know right away if plants are struggling. You’ll notice if there’s a leaky hose or if plants need staking, and so on. As a longtime gardener, I truly understand the importance of visiting the garden frequently. It’s a great way to troubleshoot issues plus it’s a joy to be out in the garden, right?

Examples of ways to implement water conservation in our gardens:

  • Testing the soil for moisture content
  • Growing vegetables that require less water than others
  • Checking our faucets, hoses, pipes or drip irrigation systems for leaks
  • Using mulch to keep moisture in the soil
  • Choosing drought-tolerant plants for our landscape

What did I forget to mention in the video?

There are two things that popped into my head after I uploaded it. (I hate it when that happens!) The first is that you can also use soaker hoses as an alternative to drip irrigation set-ups. But I should also mention that we used to have soaker hoses before we switched to drip irrigation. They worked OK for a couple of years but kept getting clogged so they’re not perfect. And the second item is that Dramm water wands make it easy to water the soil surface while you’re standing. They are really well-made and easy to find at hardware stores and home centers.

Here’s my Water Conservation video:

Was this information helpful? I’m hearing from a lot of folks that this video was very timely. If you’d like to watch more of my videos, here’s a direct link to my YouTube channel.