As water harvesters, we’re all about creating beauty in our landscapes and gardens. But we’re also dealing with scarcity. It isn’t just the water that’s scarce, we need to handle monetary and time constraints.
Transcript
INTRO: From Tucson, Arizona, welcome to the Water Harvesting 101 podcast. My name is Martha Retallick. I’ve been a water harvester for 20 years, and I’m looking forward to helping you get started.
Before we do that, here’s a little Tucson secret: For most of the year, we’re in drought. That’s just how life is in the desert.
But when the rains return, oh, do they ever. They often bring an unwelcome friend called flooding.
How do we reduce the risks of flooding? We do it with water harvesting.
Water harvesting encompasses three activities:
- Redirecting rainwater away from where it isn’t wanted to where it is.
- Storing rainwater for later use, for example, during a drought.
- Recycling “used” water. At my place, I don’t let laundry water go down the drain. Instead, it’s for the fruit trees.
We’ll be covering all of these topics and more, so let’s get started.
EPISODE: This episode is brought to you by the mothership.
That’s what I like to call my website, WesternSkyCommunications.com.
When you get to the home page, you’re welcomed with this statement, Creating Beauty from Scarcity.
Ultimately, that’s what we’re doing as water harvesters. We’re dealing with scarcity from the perspective of scarce rainfall here in the American Southwest – or wherever you happen to be.
No one has an unlimited amount of rainfall. And the plants we’re growing have to live within the rain budget that comes from the sky. That’s one form of scarcity.
The second form of scarcity that we water harvesters quickly encounter is the scarcity of money.
This is why, if you’re operating on a tight budget as a water harvester, it’s best to start with Activity #1: redirecting rainwater away from where you don’t want it to where you do.
You do this by creating water harvesting basins filled with mulch to help that water infiltrate into the ground – slowly. You also create drainage swales to guide the water away from where you don’t want it – and into those basins.
And you create berms. They’re like a big hug around your rainwater to keep it on your property – and out of the street.
If it gets into the street, rainwater can join up with all those other water molecules and become stormwater. That stuff can be a real troublemaker. Because stormwater can cause floods.
The scarcity of money is something I am very familiar with. It was 13 years before I could afford to install a greywater harvesting system off my washing machine. And it was 16 years before I could afford a cistern.
So, Activity #1, redirecting rainwater, that one has been on heavy rotation around here.
Here’s another scarcity that we deal with, the scarcity of time.
At my place, I like to attach a hose to my cistern faucet, fill a watering can, and empty it into my raised bed gardens. It’s like my morning meditation.
But some people just don’t have time for watering can meditation. For all of you busy people, here’s the good news: It’s possible to attach an irrigation pump and timer to your cistern so you can automatically water whenever you need to.
Scarce time is also a factor when we’re recycling “used” water.
Let’s consider my laundry-to-landscape greywater harvesting system. The greywater is pumped out of the washing machine, and then it flows into irrigation lines and exits via emitters.
I don’t have to take the time to run around the yard with hoses to water this tree or that tree or, wait a minute, I watered that tree last week. And hold on, didn’t I just water that one two weeks ago, it’s winter, and I only need to water it every three or four weeks?
The emitters are either open or closed, and that’s a lot easier than trying to remember what I did and when.
So that’s three forms of scarcity, from which we are creating beauty. There’s the scarcity of water, the scarcity of money, and the scarcity of time.
If you’d like to learn more about water harvesting, sign up for my monthly email newsletter. If you do, I’ll give you a free copy of my Water Harvesting Cheat Sheet.
And if you’d like to support the Water Harvesting 101 podcast, the PayPal email address is info@westernskycommunications.com.
OUTRO: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Water Harvesting 101 podcast. If you’d like to learn more about water harvesting, meet my book family.
First, it’s City Nature, the book that’s guaranteed to look great on any coffee table. City Nature reveals my secrets to water harvesting through my 20-year journey of transforming my Tucson home into an urban oasis. Get the details at CityNatureBook.com.
And if you’re on the go, take water harvesting with you. Water Harvesting 101 is an audiobook and eBook combination that will teach you the nuts and bolts of water harvesting and show you how to put them to work. Available exclusively at WaterHarvesting101Book.com.