Steve Snedeker’s Landscaping and Gardening Blog

Which picture below is the landscape that has irrigation? One of these pictures is irrigated by buried pipe and the other has no irrigation supply whatsoever.

This?  (click all images to enlarge)

Or this?

If you answered the second picture, you would be correct. The top picture – from Vancouver, British Columbia – is from a project we did many years ago, obviously, which has performed spectacularly and grown thanks to the local climate – which is quite wet.

The second picture is from Reno, Nevada – smack in the middle of the Great Basin high desert and not quite a year old yet at the time of this picture. It is very irrigated, by means of buried pipes in the ground and small emitters which produce a designated amount of water to each individual plant. One thing about planting stuff in Reno is that, if somehow the watering regime is not right, you will find out fast! A pounding and relentless Sun mixes with an utter lack of humidity to expose any deficiencies pretty much immediately. For the record, here are later looks at that project, 2 years later:

This latter property is completely irrigated. Yes, as time has gone on, additional emitters were added, adding marginally to the water bill. Many times and in many places, this is the case, especially in neighborhoods such as this which were subdivisions, completely terraformed by excavators and bulldozers to conform to planned needs. Other places in this dry region where drip is used – in, say, homes built on more established existing soils, sometimes the drip irrigation merely acts to get roots to a water table which literally takes over from there. In these cases, the irrigation system, at least for trees and for many plants, can take a hike.

Here is a picture of what a project looks like during the course of installing drip irrigation:

Notice the black pipe coursing throughout the plantings. Eventually, it will be buried, as will the smaller distribution tubes that carry a certain pre-allocated amount of water to the roots of the trees and plants. One can actually determine precisely how much water is used over a period of time by use of these regulated devices. Put on a time clock, we can say, for example, that this group of plants has 200 different plants on it. Of these, the trees will have 3 – two gallon per hour (GPH)* – emitters apiece. Otherwise, the plants themselves will have one 2 GPH emitter apiece. (Note: some of the smaller ones will actually have 1 GPH emitters).

If we run it for a half hour, our 40 trees and 160 plants will need a total of:

(Trees- 40 x 6/2 = 120 gallons and the Plants – 160 x 2 / 2 = 160 gallons. Total = 280 gallons of water).

Inasmuch as this big project had some 4 planting zones of a similar make up, we can see that it would use around 1,000 gallons of water per day.

A Caveat: (Once again, this is a 5 acre project, somewhat densely planted. Yes, it must be nice! Bear in mind, for this guy, he had his own well, too, so much of his water went literally right back down into his own water table.)

For the project above this one, where we compared irrigation versus non-irrigation, the numbers for one zone listed here apply to the entire yard. So what is 280 gallons? How does it compare to our daily uses of water, per se?

Bath: 50 gallons
Shower: 2 gallons per minute (15 minutes shower = 30 gallons)
Teeth brushing: 1 gallon
Hands/face washing: 1 gallon
Face/leg shaving: 1 gallon
Dishwasher: 20 gallons/load
Dishwashing by hand: 5 gallons/load
Clothes washing (machine): : 10 gallons/load
Toilet flush: 3 gallons
Glasses of water drunk: 8 oz. per glass (1/16th of a gallon)

As can be seen, the “hardship” of water can be lessened by the proper use of the right irrigation materials. Put another way, if you let a hose run, it puts out around 8-12 gallons a minute. If you have your garden hose running for an hour, watering plants and trees, you will have used 2-3 times what that drip irrigation system supplied to all those plants and trees. The equivalent to using the drip system for 40 trees and 160 plants is to taking 2 baths, flushing 6 times, washing 2 loads of clothes and running the dishwasher.

Now, grass is thirstier. The project below had 12 sprinkler heads using 2 gallons each per minute. They often ran it for upwards of 10 minutes. Just this lawn alone, therefore, used 240 gallons a day! And that’s when they only watered it once. (Many times, they ran it twice.)

They asked us for a method of keeping some lawn but cutting down costs of watering. By using alternative materials instead of lawn, such as brick pavers and by creating planting beds, we were able to save them substantial watering costs. For one thing, we used low trajectory nozzles on their sprinkler heads which minimized how much sprayed water was lost due to wind – in Reno, this is a concern. For another, we placed them in better spots and used a nozzle that has been developed which uses less water in general, yet still delivers to the exact spots they are designed for. What we ended up with was a landscape which cost them 2/3 less money on watering and yet still had some lawn. Here it is:

Any more, we consistently convert what once were huge swaths of grass into more manageable and less water-hogging landscapes. What is most bizarre about the entire scenario is how friendly one can get towards plants and flowers and – frankly – how much more interesting they can be, done right. Irony of ironies, I suppose, even installing a water feature using water recycled by a pump can reduce a water bill.

There are design rules which have also adapted to the new realities surrounding watering shortages and wiser use of this precious resource. That’s what I will address next.

From this article:

“Raising irrigation water efficiency typically means shifting from the less efficient flood or furrow system to overhead sprinklers or drip irrigation, the gold standard of irrigation efficiency. Switching from flood or furrow to low-pressure sprinkler systems reduces water use by an estimated 30 percent, while switching to drip irrigation typically cuts water use in half. A drip system also raises yields because it provides a steady supply of water with minimal losses to evaporation. Since drip systems are both labor-intensive and water-efficient, they are well suited to countries with a surplus of labor and a shortage of water.

A few small countries—Cyprus, Israel, and Jordan—rely heavily on drip irrigation. Among the big three agricultural producers, this more-efficient technology is used on 1–3 percent of irrigated land in India and China and on roughly 4 percent in the United States.

In recent years, small-scale drip-irrigation systems—virtually a bucket that relies on gravity to distribute the water through flexible plastic tubing—have been developed to irrigate small vegetable gardens with roughly 100 plants (covering 25 square meters). Somewhat larger drum systems irrigate 125 square meters. Large-scale drip systems using plastic lines that can be moved easily are also becoming popular. These simple systems can pay for themselves in one year. By reducing water costs and raising yields, they can dramatically raise incomes of smallholders.”

Drip irrigation increases the productivity of water usage to more than 70% over the above-listed current standards which apply in surprisingly many places. More importantly, in terms of landscaping, drip irrigation and adaptations of garden and landscape design, alternatives are being sought to limit the more water-hoggish elements of our landscaping past.

One very major beneficiary of attention is obviously the famous “English Model” – great wide expanses of gorgeous and green grass. In the more recent relocation of millions of Americans, for example, to thriving Western cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas and Reno, criticisms of desert towns having monstrous amounts of grass are completely accurate in their condemnation. Inasmuch as these water worries are local, it is even more the case.

Personally, I have prided myself on adhering to some of these tenets, then even enlarging on them. Yes, I have installed large pieces of grass for clients in Reno and in California towns where water is becoming short-handed. I have had my own issues with finding alternatives to grass, personally, especially since I so admire all a great lawn can accomplish in terms of literally changing the micro-climate of weather inside a home’s individual envelope. Grass lawns cool things down; they evaporate, of course, and push moisture into the air in non humid climates; they look fabulous and are fun to walk on, sit on, lay on and play on. And, having said all that, I know lots of dudes who are utterly macho about having “the most killer lawn in the neighborhood”, lol. I do know these men and they are numerous!

This is great for Kentucky, where taking one’s chances on rainfall irrigating such water-intensive stuff can generally be relied on. But. Even they are facing some drought conditions which have led to some scary fears. Atlanta, Georgia faces the results of their most recent drought with trepidation. They failed to allow for this possibility in their water-planning and now face huge issues. My point is this – we all have some responsibility in a wiser use of the resource of water.

Let’s Review – This is a Kentucky Highway

And this is a Nevada Highway:

Big difference.     Note the lack of grass in the lower photo.

It would be useless asking Americans or Australians to not want gardens outside their homes. Them would be fighting words, anyway. The notion of beauty and of simple enjoyment is an issue which few would give over to any government body. For another thing, food gardening saves us money and grants us a known fruit or veggie with that famous maximum taste and which grows from fertilizers and nutrients and soils of which we are totally aware. When we bite into a Red Delicious Apple or into some gorgeously rich-tasting Yellow Grape Tomato – or when our asparagus finally makes it onto our tables after a few years of cultivation – we have a product of our own labors and a foodstuff we actually earned and which – by almost any criterion – tastes better than those mass-produced suckers we get from the store, sold by appearance in a small selection of variety.

So where do we all go?  Nevada?

Next, I will show how landscaping is adapting to the newer realities and will provide an explanation of how simple and easy converting to drip irrigation can be. The uses of drip irrigation can surprise us, as well, including automated watering of such things as hanging baskets.