top of page
Writer's pictureFamily First Farms

Drip Drip, Hooray! The Importance of Sustainable Gardening


Going green is all the rave currently, but what is it? As green recycling bins full of plastic bottles and broken down cardboard boxes have started to become a thing of the past, sustainability remains a hot topic of concern for large companies and consumers alike. Increasing deadlines to eliminate carbon footprints, reduce the dependency of petroleum usage, and a desire to minimize overall impact to the environment is driving what some consider to be an already unstable market into the depths of uncertainty.


For as long as any documented beginning of history, water has played a pivotal role providing both nourishment and shelter to plants and animals. Green energy advancements have reenergized efforts to conserve this precious element and ensure it's presence for time to come.



While reducing water consumption is important there are still many needs that require it's use including your garden. Your vegetables will need a consistent amount of water to grow healthy sizes and quantities. During the hot summer months, this can be a difficult task to achieve between our normal daily duties, and mother nature following her own clock and not always sending help when needed. Usually the first step to save time is a sprinkler system. These do well, however initial set up can be costly and there are occasional repairs. More importantly those systems use substantial amounts of water in a short period of time, which again means a big water bill and maybe it's not worth growing your own tomatoes if it's an extra 60 bucks a month.


Now, let's save some money and eat from our own backyards, the right way! If you haven't heard of drip irrigation before now, this quick intro will get you all caught up. Fast growing in lawn and garden sections every where is a desire to save money and resources by being as sustainable as possible. Drip irrigation has been both and more. Using your own provided water source as in your home faucet or a rain water re-use set up, you are able to use a much smaller amount of water for your plants or crops. This ultimately saves you money. Its simple, less water used equals less money spent.



Using less water and saving money is awesome but there is still the issue of finding time right? With busy daily lives that often don't follow a routine it can be difficult to find the time needed to water manually. The use of a water timer can assist with this dilemma. For a fairly decent price a multi zoned water timer can provide timed water delivery to your irrigation system from your water source. You'll definitely want to do your research and decide on the right water timer for your garden.


Efficient water delivery, saved money, little time required, sounds perfect right? Well we still need to set it up. Your layout will depend on the size of your graden and should be considered when acquiring your water timer for zoning purposes. This is important as these zones allow individually controlled time. During hot summer months, the sweet potatoes in zone one may only require one thorough weekly watering, while the pepper plants growing in zone two need watering twice a week. Yet another way of saving unnecessary water by only watering whats needed.



Inexpensive hardware gives opportunity to creativity. Most fittings and hoses can be purchased in different quantities and lengths for less than $20. Many set ups I've encountered have costs less than a few hundred dollars to cover large sqft gardens that have ultimately assisted in great yield at a low water cost.




As much as I could continue, stopping here makes for a solid 5 minute intro read on a sustainable, efficient, beneficial, and inexpensive way to provide water to your plants or garden. Not to mention it all looks pretty cool once installed. This easy operational, low maintenance installation could save you buckets of money and replace them with buckets of garden goodies! Take a look and stick around for the second part of this series as we look into connector fittings and emitter types.

1 Comment


Little Nugs
Sep 18, 2022

Yeah baby. Lots of great info in there. It's amazing how hands of the garden can be when it comes to the watering part of things. I don't know about you but I hate dragging the hose and sprayer all around the yard!

Like
bottom of page