Water is Life

Water is life, quite literally. Other than organic material, and the (very) occasional weed tea watering, my plants survive very happily without any additional food. But without water, they die.

In this blog, I will look at at least five ways you can increase your garden’s resilience to a lack of water, and at the same time, reduce your costs and effort. A win-win situation!

Factors Affecting Water in the Garden

I’m writing this on a July day that is predicted to reach 36°C by late afternoon. Our annual rainfall is around 600mm here on the Costa Blanca North. Extreme heat, and low rainfall are causing experts to become increasingly concerned with ‘desertification’ (land turning into deserts). We even have a research centre at the University of Valencia whose sole aim is to research this topic (if you’re interested, you can find out more here.

So when we’re considering water in our garden, we need to use a several-pronged approach, because just pouring water on our plants, without any other considerations, is not a long-term solution.

1. Reduce Evaporation

   When temperatures are extreme, water evaporates from the soil, just like when you boil a pan of water in the kitchen. One of the best ways of keeping that moisture in the soil, is to make sure you have a really thick layer of mulch. Mulch is just a fancy way of saying that you put stuff on the surface of the soil. There are many ways to do this.

   One of my favourites is ‘Chop and Drop’. This does exactly what it says! Anything you chop down (deadheading roses, grasses, leaves, sticks, twigs, any sort of pruning) gets dropped on the ground. Eventually, this material gets incorporated into the soil, but until it does, it provides a great barrier against evaporation.

2. Store Water in your Soil

   Think about a desert. Dry. Dusty. Sandy.

   Now think about a forest floor. Dark. Springy. Moist. Cool.

   The difference is in the soil.

   In a forest, the soil is made up of layers of organic material, that have been building over years (sometimes thousands of years!).

   A rich, dark soil is a like a sponge. The water goes in and stays stored in the rotting plant material, and within the creatures who live in healthy soil. The more rotting plant material you have in your soil, the more sponge-like it will be, and the more sponge-like it is, the less you have to water.

   The chop-and-drop technique above works well to achieve this, as well as providing mulch to cut down evaporation, but you can also add other materials; compost, woodchips, shredded paper and card (you might need to check that the dyes and glues used are plant-based and safe for garden use), vegetable scraps, grass clippings, leaves… there’s plenty of choice!

   Spread the organic material on the soil (see point 1!) or add it to planting holes or trenches.

   Another win-win.

3. Choose Plants Wisely

   On a recent visit to some gardens, I stood in awe of the Gunnera plants at the water’s edge. Many metres tall, with enormous leaves, they really are statuesque plants. They need to be planted in permanently damp soil. I can’t offer that in my Mediterranean garden yet.

   But during my ‘observation’ phase in my garden, I realised that there were many plants that survive, and thrive with hardly any irrigation at all. Not only that, they are often really easy to propagate through cuttings or division, so I can have lots of them.

   Some of my favourites are…

   Iris, Mexican Petunia, Lemongrass, various cacti and succulents, winter-flowering Jasmine, Osteospermum, Sage, Rosemary, Mint, Agapanthus… (there are many more, but this is a good start!), and various fruit trees that needed regular watering in their first year, but now that their roots are established, never need to be watered.

   Some of these plants, even in these harsh conditions, survive without additional water for long periods of time. This leads me nicely to the next point…

4. Shade!

   If you’ve ever walked into a forest on a sunny day, you’ll immediately notice a temperature drop. Some of the reasons above are contributory factors, but perhaps the biggest is the shade provided by the trees.

   We get some extremely strong winds in the garden, which shred garden umbrellas and shades but our trees are unaffected. It’s part of my rationale for growing a forest garden, because over time, the trees I have planted, will form a canopy to shade the garden (and us) below.

   When the soil is shaded, it is cooler, so there is less evaporation. There are also fungal networks that grow between the trees and plants, which can help to move the water in the soil about to where it is needed most.

   If you don’t have any trees at the moment, it might be worth looking at some fast-growing species (like Moringa) which will give you shade in a much shorter time, and then some slower-growing varieties that can take over later. With big enough containers, you can even have quite large trees in pots.

5. Systems

   The picture above is of a homemade Olla. This one is a clay pot, sunk into the ground, which is filled with water and covered with a plant saucer, but there are other versions… I like this one below!

   The idea is that the water is drawn through the walls of the pot into the soil around it, and the plant roots seek out the water supply from there.

   Because it has a lid, the water hardly evaporates, so the surrounding plants get the benefit of it slowly seeping through to the soil, and the pot itself only needs refilling every few days, so it cuts down on your work too!

These five ideas are a really good start, but they are by no means the end of the story, so I will be writing more about water soon…

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Happy permaculturing!