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Index : Watering
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- 6. Harvesting Winter Rains for Your Plants - Top
- As the name implies, water harvesting is a method of water conservation which collects or redirects rainfall to water landscape plants, gardens and potted plants. Water savings is the most important benefit of water harvesting. But it’s also a great way to obtain higher quality water, free of salts and chemicals that’s preferred by delicate potted and garden plants.
It’s amazing how much rain water can be collected just from the roof of an average-sized home. For every 1,000 square feet of roof area (20' x 50' exterior house dimensions), over 2,000 gallons of water can be collected from our normal winter rains alone! The total collected annually could approach 7,000 gallons of water.
Many Arizona homes lack a guttering system to collect rainfall. But, guttering is easily installed and not that expensive. The cost of guttering and down spouts ranges from $5 to $9 per foot. So for a home with 1,000 square feet of roof area the cost would range from $350 to $630. In addition, a storage container or containers is needed to hold the water. These include; rain barrels, plastic trash containers, metal stock tanks, and concrete cisterns. Increasingly popular for water storage are culvert pipes made of galvanized steel. These pipes can be purchased in various diameters and cut to custom lengths to store as much water as you like. They’re set on end in a concrete base and plumbed with a hose bib or gate valve pipe to connect on a hose or irritation tubing.
Water tanks with a capacity of 2000 gallons or less cost between $0.45 and $1.00 per gallon of storage; concrete tanks are more expensive than equivalent synthetic tanks. Larger-volume concrete tanks cost roughly $1.25 per gallon of storage.
In addition to collecting rainwater in storage tanks, a less expensive way to utilize rainwater is by redirecting it through your yard. During a heavy rain, put on your poncho, and go out to observe how water runs through and off you property. Think of ways to slow or divert the flow to allow it to be absorbed into the soil. Terracing of soil or building small rock dams can work for this purpose. You can also redirect the flow of water by fashioning small channels, ditches or swales through the landscape to where the water is most needed for plants.
When planting new trees and shrubs, fashion a shallow, saucer-like basin and locate the plant in the middle. That way, rainwater will flow towards the center of the basin and to base of the plant(s). The basin only needs to be a few inches deep at the center. The width of the depression should correspond to the plant size. Trees will need an area as wide as the canopy spread to capture sufficient amounts of water. The same is true for shrubs. But if your limited with space, just make the basin as wide as possible.
If your landscape is on a slope, instead of basins, berms can be created on the down-slope side of trees or shrub groupings to prevent water from flowing away. With the addition of berms, moats, or soil terracing, flat areas also can hold water.
For a more detailed look at water harvesting, you can go on-line to view the University of Arizona Publication "Harvesting Rainwater for Landscape Use" at: ag.arizona.edu/pubs/water/az1052/
Written by John Begeman, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the University of Arizona, 520-626-5161.
- Updated: January 1, 2006
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