So, we don’t feature this garden very often in our chats. This one was our “OG” garden that came with our place. Today, it serves as our perennial flower garden. This is also where we do a lot of our perennial flower experimentation, seeing if things will come back in zone 3 or not.
We did a little bit of an upgrade this year as part of our spring cleanup. We finally got some irrigation out to this garden! So, we’ll no longer have to water by hand anymore! This one gets its own zone as we don’t have to water it as frequently as other zones.
While we were at it, since we’ll have water out here now, we’re also installing a splitter that will allow us to hook up a hose straight to our centralized irrigation tank’s pump. This is going to provide quite the benefit as we’ll no longer have to drag 125 feet of hose around the yard! So, now when we’re irrigating our deck garden or greenhouse, we’ll have much closer water at the ready!
Building out irrigation systems has been one of the most important ways we’ve expanded our growing capabilities. It’s a vast difference, in terms of time, from watering by hand and just turning on a faucet and letting it run for awhile. Whereas before, this garden would take us 10-15 minutes to water. Now, it’ll take about 30 seconds to turn and again to turn off.
Irrigation is also super important if you’re trying to conserve water. At our home, we’re 100% off the water grid, so that conservation is top of mind. Irrigation systems are more efficient and also reduce losses from evaporation and overspray, which can account for a lot of water loss! If you’re paying a pretty penny for your water, the cost savings are often enough to pay for the system.
So, if you’re looking to save yourself some time with your gardens, irrigation is one of the top ways to do it! It’s really not a difficult thing to accomplish and the benefits are immense. I’m sure that we’ll detail more about our irrigation systems as we get into the season.
