Gardening when Water is Scarce

Affiliate Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State earns from qualifying purchases. When you buy through our links, you’re helping The Evergreen Thumb Podcast grow—just like good fertilizer! Product recommendations are our own and do not represent the views of MGFWS or Washington State University. Thanks for supporting us!

In this episode, Lisa Taylor returns to share tips on saving water while gardening. Lisa focuses on how being intentional with water use improves soil health, efficient watering techniques, and drought-tolerant practices for thriving plants. She shares some of her favorite high-quality tools to make saving water easier. Listen to learn how to build resilient gardens that thrive with less water, perfect for hot summers and adapting to climate change.

Lisa Taylor is a freelance garden speaker, educator, consultant, and author of the Maritime Northwest Garden Guide, 2nd ed., and Your Farm in the City: An Urban Dweller’s Guide to Growing Food and Raising Animals. She is a Master Composter and a pioneer in Children’s Gardening. Lisa has been teaching people of all ages to garden organically for 30 years. She is passionate about teaching everyone how to grow their own food. For Lisa, eating is the main reason for growing plants.

Listen Now

Resources for Saving Water

Transcript

Erin Hoover (00:01)

Welcome to The Evergreen Thumb episode 74. My guest today is Lisa Taylor. Lisa is a freelance garden speaker and educator. And she is here today to talk to us all about gardening when water is scarce or when we’re in drought conditions.

Erin Hoover (00:17)
Lisa, thanks for joining me today. Welcome back.

Lisa Taylor (00:20)
Thank you. It is a pleasure. I had so much fun last time. I was delighted when you asked me back.

Identifying Plant Stress

Erin Hoover (00:26)
So, today we’re gonna talk about gardening when water is scarce. And since Washington has already declared a drought for this summer, and although it’s raining right now, it’s not gonna rain nearly enough to pick up that drought. So, let’s talk about, you know, plant stress, we’ll talk about all kinds of different things about moisture and that kind of thing. But what are some of the early signs of plant stress that people should keep an eye out for.

Lisa Taylor (00:49)
Sure. Sure. Well, it’s different with different kinds of plants. So, we’re talking about growing vegetables, but I think we need to think broadly across the landscape as well, because some of the things in your landscape are edible as well. So, for annual crops, whether it be edibles or flowers, they’re just gonna look dried out. They’re gonna look desiccated. They’re gonna be wilty, but there’s a caveat.

The way plants look when they’re thirsty is also the way they look when they’re overwatered. Wilty plants can be a sign of overwatering as well as not enough watering. You know, it’s like, great. Now what do I do?

So before we go any further, I just want to talk about like, we need to know what is going on in the soil and whether it’s dry or wet or moist to know really if it’s time to water plants or not, because of the first things we want to do if we’re conserving water is water only when the plants really need it. And so for many of the things in your landscape, they really don’t need added water. Maybe a little for a couple of months if we have a particularly dry time.

So, testing the soil. I always say, finger’s your favorite tool, it’s with you everywhere, but not everybody wants to stick their finger in the soil, and you can’t go down very deep. So you can’t really see what’s going on deeper in the soil where the roots are really taking up that moisture. Somebody during one of my Zoom classes put in the comments and I happened to see it that they bought a moisture meter, and it was the best $10 they ever spent. So I was like, moisture meter, I should check that out.

So, if you search hydrometer, you’re gonna get something way more scientific than you need. What you just need is, I think as a gardener, like is it dry? Is it moist? Is it wet? That’s it. So if you search for a moisture meter or tester, what you’ll come up with is something with a big dial, and it’ll have like a little needle that goes across dry to wet, and a long probe that’s like about 10 inches long.

You can use it for your indoor plants, and that’s one thing that we use all the time, because when you water indoor plants, but also when we’re getting things established, when we’re starting to plant new things in the landscape, or we’re wondering about different areas around the garden, we can just go around and stick that thing in. It either says it’s dry or moist or wet, and then we can take action from there. So I think I even found a set of two, and they were like less than $10 each.

Usually, I’m not going to advocate a brand or whatever, but I did go to that big online distribution place that’s named after those awesome women that lived on that island. I found it there simply because sometimes you’re not going to find it out in a retail setting. So treat yourself to that this year and use it all over the place to find out what the soil is like. And then you can start to take action.

Erin Hoover (04:02)
That sounds great.

Lisa Taylor (04:04)
Yeah, you’re gonna love it, Erin, when you go get one. Do you have one?

Tools for Efficient Watering

Erin Hoover (04:08)
Well, I thought we did have one. I think we had one for houseplants at one point, but I think I need one with the longer probe for for the vegetable garden this summer.

So what other kind of tools or methods are there that can help us water more efficiently or not overwater?

Lisa Taylor (04:25)
Well, I think keeping track of your water and kind of getting a routine in line, and using the right tools. And I am a big advocate of spending money on quality tools. There are a couple things, I mean, regardless of whether we’re in a drought or not, you’re going to be watering in the garden. So some of the things we want are, is to gather up a bunch of good watering tools and create a leak-free toolkit.

Because we’re gonna use the water, but we need to make sure we’re not leaking all over the place and that we’re not watering things we don’t want to water, and that we water for a certain amount of time, and that we can turn off the water when we need it to be off. So, if you’ve taken any of my classes online, you’ll know about my love of a brass ball valve.

And it’s a thing that I put on the end of every hose I have, and it’s just a big brass fixture that screws on. It has a lever that goes either perpendicular or parallel to the hose, and it just simply turns the water on or off. There’s lots of them out there. There’s a whole bunch of plastic ones that last for about a second.

I always just tell people not to look at the price and just buy a proper brass ball valve, and just know that you’re going to have it for probably, you know, another 20 years. I have one that I’m just retiring mostly because they have all kinds of different parts and replacing is it’s not working. Even though I have lots of different spare parts, I’m just going to retire it.

But it, but I got it when I first started at Seattle Tilth, so that was like 30 years ago or longer. So, not to say a lot of brands, but people are going to ask like, where did you get that? What is that? And so I like the Dramm ball valve. The brass one has a long handle, so it’s very easy for people who have cold or brittle hands. Lee Valley Tools also sells a similar one.

Just don’t be surprised at how expensive it is. But also know that once you get it and you put it on, you’re never gonna, you’re never gonna like think like, why did I spend all that money? You’re gonna just be like, oh my God, this is so great. You can turn the water on and off where you are. You’re not going back and forth to the hose bib. You can adjust the amount of water that’s coming out. So if you’re using some kind of sprinkler or whatever, let’s talk about what to look for.

Watering Techniques and Strategies

Watering is a huge job. It’s a mystery to most people. Retailers know that. And so when you go into the nursery or retail setting, there’s just gonna be a million brightly colored rainbow-colored tools with a billion different things that they do. And what you want to look for are, it’s okay to get something sparkly in color, but it needs to have few moving parts and those parts need to be replaceable. So it might just have one on-off switch, but it might not be a thing that you can even replace.

The ball valves I’m talking about, you can replace them, but dude, you don’t even need to, because they last forever. So instead of the 10-dial thing, you’re just gonna get a water breaker that has just the holes in the water head, and then you have the ball valve, which will help you adjust and turn it on and off. So no moving parts, because we get water, we drop it in the soil, we get soil and water together, they dry, and they become cement. And then the 10 dial-a-whatever is not going to do you any good.

And you know, the last thing you want is to have a thing that lasts for a year and then it doesn’t work anymore, and you don’t know what to do with it other than like throw it in the garbage. So think ahead, plan on it, look for things with few moving parts.

So a water breaker, a good watering can that has a push-on rose rather than a screw-on rose; something small that you can control.

All those giant two-gallon watering cans weigh 16 pounds when they’re full, and you can’t control the water. You’re not gonna really want to use it, because you’ll just think that it’s you when it really is the tool. I like a bucket to refill if I need to refill, and I like about a half-gallon. So it’s like four pounds, and I could just go back to the bucket and fill up.

So, making things easy for yourself, but also picking the tools that are gonna make it easy for you, and they’re gonna last a really long time.

Hoses are another thing. If you look on the back of most hoses, it says this hose is not for drinking water. It’s not safe to drink water from this hose. Almost all of them. So if that’s important to you, if you want a drinking water quality hose, you’re gonna need to look for that.

You know, maybe an RV or boat hose, one of those white hoses? They’re not reinforced, so they’re not gonna handle having the water pressure on all the time. They’re gonna burst, but they’ll be okay if you’re turning on and off.

Some kind of timer, even if you’re hand watering, a timer will be a great benefit, because it’s gonna just turn off on its own. If you get called away or get distracted, you just know that in whatever, a half hour, the water’s turning off. And I like those hand ones, they’re kind of like an egg timer, but there are lots of other things.

But remember, the more simple you make it, the fewer leaks, the easier it is to use, the easier it is, easier it is, easier it is. And so, collecting all these tools and then thinking about drip irrigation or simple drip.

So there are plenty of things that we need to hand water. And I might use a sprinkler on some new seed beds or a flower bed as it’s coming up. But most of the time, I really want to get the water down close to the ground. So those bubblers are a low-cost, low-entry drip irrigation device.

And it’s just kind of like a little, it looks like a giant microphone. You put it on the end of the hose, and you just barely turn the water on, and it just gurgles over there. And it’s great, you lay it down out by the drip line, which is the outer edge of your plants, where the water can actually get to the roots. So under the canopy and near the trunk, it’s gonna be dry and not a lot of action. The action zone is out at the edge of the plants where they can get water, where the roots are taking up water, nutrients, air, sunlight, and all the rest of that.

So you can drop one of those. Turn on your timer, gurgle for 45 minutes, twice a week as you’re establishing something, something like that, maybe even less of a gurgle, maybe even less time. And I think what I wanna do is like, water for, you know, half hour and then wait for a couple hours to go take my moisture meter and see is it wet or is it just moist or what is it? Because that’s going to tell me a little bit about the percolation and the absorption rate that I’m getting.

And mostly I just am going to be really open to what the plants are saying to me and what I feel a little bit about what’s going on. And I want to just do fewer waterings for longer periods of time, I’m only gonna be like a tablespoon of water, you know? I mean, instead of like two cups, right? That’s kind of the slowness of drip irrigation or soaker hoses. So you have to have them on for really long time because you’re only applying like a teaspoon of water at a time, right? Does that make sense?

Erin Hoover (11:58)
Yeah.

Lisa Taylor (11:59)
So a lot of times, people that are used to using overhead watering or a water breaker to water are really surprised that they need to leave it on for an hour and a half or whatever in order to get the same amount of water. And what they see is their plants start to dry out and need water between our scheduled watering times. So that’s kind of how I start.

If you’ve got drip irrigation lines or soaker hoses, they may have a rating. They may be like, one gallon per hour, and that gives you a little bit of an idea. I’m thinking about a gallon a week per plant, right? So that’s like a milk jug full of water for a whole week for a plant. And that’s kind of just an idea in my head. Might be a little more, up to two gallons for bigger things, but that’s an idea for you to keep that in mind.

And so we’re just sort of establishing a routine so that we can water, you know, instead of going out there and watering 10 minutes every night, we’re going to water maybe an hour, an hour and 15 minutes twice a week. And what we do when we do that is we’re really helping the water to go down, and it’s saturating the lower part of the soil where the plant roots can reach out and get more of that moisture.

We’re also, because we’re right there on the soil surface, we’re eliminating evaporation, right? And that’s a huge thing. Like watering overhand, it’s just going up into the atmosphere. But when you have it laying on the ground using either a bubbler, a soaker hose, or drip irrigation line, it’s right at the soil. Now, what if you can’t go there yet? There are some crafty ways you can at least just slow the water application.

So sometimes when I plant something, I will plant an empty pot next to it. And I’ll fill that with some rocks and gravel and stuff just to slow things down, but I still want it to drain. And so when I water that plant, I water the pot next to it, fill it up, and let the pot slowly drain out. That’s a really good technique for containers because a lot of times containers will get kind of hydrophobic, and you water them and they just drain right out. So this is a just another way to kind of slow the delivery of the water.

So the other thing, and that’s an ancient thing, and I’m not even sure the culture, I just want to say like Mexico, because it’s a Spanish name, Olla. There are these big earthenware urns that you fill, they’re a non-glazed terracotta, and you bury them in the ground, you know, in the center of the garden, and then they have a cap.

Just a little lid, you fill up that olla, the reservoir, and it slowly seeps out. So anytime you can do that, I’ve used different kinds of plastic jugs and bottles in the same way. It just can look a little junky around your property, and things can blow around. So you just have to kind of decide where you are with being creative with slowing your water delivery to your plants.

Erin Hoover (15:07)
Yeah, we had good luck with like a five-gallon bucket with holes drilled in the side for fruit trees, where we couldn’t get water, to you know, directly to them. And that way it was slow. And that seemed to work pretty well until the holes get plugged.

Lisa Taylor (15:20)
Yeah.

That, yeah, that is a pro either the holes like splay out or they get clogged. So you just kind of have to figure out how to work that. That’s a good technique when you’ve got things that are kind of on the outer periphery, like let’s say you’ve got pumpkins or something growing and they’re way out in the back 40 and you can get, you can get a hose out there every once in a while, but you can’t get every, you know, you just can’t get it out there. and so putting a couple of five-gallon buckets out there and going and filling those once a week or filling them halfway. That could be great labor savings.

Another technique that we’ve used is and sometimes it’s because the water is a little too far away and sometimes it’s that the water is just inconvenient, even though it’s close by, is to set up a rain barrel on a pedestal that’s tall enough to get a five gallon bucket underneath and a watering can underneath and then dragging the hose over and filling up that rain barrel and then watering using the water from the rain barrel.

And that can last for several weeks in between filling it up. So that can be another way that, cause we, you know, we don’t want to neglect the watering. We just want to make sure we’re really careful with our water. And there’s some other things we can also do. So we’ve been just talking about like growing a vegetable garden, getting some watering tools that are really going to be good, you know, getting a routine.

But let’s talk about some of the other, like sort of gardening cultural techniques that also back up all these other things. So, we talked about how much to water, we talked about trying to set up a schedule, and watering in the cool of the day is key. Reduces evaporation, it’s more in line with when the plants can use it.

And so morning, like I think that scientists have said like four o’clock in the morning is the optimal time. And I’m like, yeah, I don’t think so. In the morning, first thing in the morning, before things warm up, you can water, and that will actually warm up things.

So if you’re, if you’re growing more tropical or summer-loving long-season plants, like it warmer than it is here, watering in the morning is what you want to do. If you have things that are more cool, a little more heat tender, not as heat-resistant, maybe some lingering spring crops, or some, you know, your early fall crops. You can water those in the evening, and that puts out the fire. So cool of the day, the right amount, right place, right there, eliminating all those leaks.

So here is the deal. When you stick something onto your hose bib, you are a plumber, and your job as a plumber is to move water from one location to another without leaks. So you need to embrace the plumber, and you get your partner to make you a special plumbing badge, several plumbing badges, so that you get a little sense of like accomplishment because you can do it. It’s totally manual. So there’s no electronics involved, really. It’s all just parts and pieces. So if you put together, you know, Tinker toys or Legos, you can figure out plumbing

At this level. So, if it leaks, you’re either going to use it and it’s leakin’ or you’re going to not use it because it leaks. And both are bad options. So when you when you allow the leak to remain and you still use the thing, your water bill will be sky high and it will be a shock. And you’ll be like, holy cow, I should really listen to what I say.

So getting some different rubber gaskets and different tools, not to plug my stuff, but I’ve plugged other people’s things. I have a great online class called Watering Your Edible Garden, and I show you how to set up simple drip lines, I show you how to fix a hose, I show you all my favorite best tools. It’s not terribly expensive, and you can watch it in perpetuity on any device you like.

So think about that. That’s at gardenwithlisa.com. Just follow the Learn with Lisa tab. I might even put it on the front page if I’m feeling particularly website-y. I need to put The Evergreen Thumb on my front page, so maybe I’ll put the other one there. But think about that because there aren’t a lot of classes you can take. And I’m not even really sure. Maybe my first book, Your Farm in the City, I actually did go into how to fix a hose.

But really, I think a lot of people need to see it and to see it hands-on before they feel comfortable and brave enough to pursue it. And so far, nobody’s ever offered me. And so I’m not an ambassador or I’m not allied with any products. So, I can just tell you the ones that you should buy. And if they change and I don’t like them anymore, then I’ll tell you that too. So, until such time that I have a very beneficial sponsor. I’ll tell you the truth when it comes to this kind of thing.

And remember, watering, it’s difficult. It takes time. It takes the right tools, and the stores know that and they’re trying to sell you on it. So like when I went on a trip to the store to buy watering tools, there were so many I couldn’t even touch because they had movable many movable parts that I couldn’t replace.

Soil Health and Watering

Really, let’s talk about soil. Because, you know, and we always come back to it or we start with it. Building healthy soil, that’s the foundation of a successful, thriving garden. And healthy soil is a sponge and it absorbs water. So we want to keep the water moist, let it dry out just a little. We never want it to get bone-dry because dry soil is hydrophobic. And moist soil accepts water.

Cisco Morris used to say, maybe he still does, you want to be able to add water to your soil at the same rate it can absorb it. And he described it like pouring hot water in a delicate teacup. Maybe I just made that up. Maybe he didn’t say that. He should have said that. Maybe I said it. Anyway, it’s really satisfying when you’re watering and the soil is absorbing. So think about building healthy soil and you do that by adding organic matter or compost.

So every year, couple times a year, and in between, you can add finished compost to your garden. An inch in the spring, an inch in the fall if you like, and then in between, depending on what you’re growing, you can top dress, and that is just spread a thin layer of compost out. Just kinda be a little booster for our soil microbes, and they’re the things that really make our soil healthy.

Mulching and Organic Matter to Save Water

In between that, we’re gonna use mulches. So building healthy soil by adding compost, and if we can mix that in, that’d be great. But we’re gonna use a woody mulch to cover the soil during our heavy drought periods. And when I mean woody mulch, I mean wood chips, not bark chips. And I mean woody landscape mulch that again is a mixture of plant material. So bark.

Bark is a byproduct of our lumbering industry. When the logs go to the mill, they’re covered in bark, which has been helpful to the tree. It has kept the tree dry. It has protected the living layer of the tree. It’s kept air out so it doesn’t rot while it’s standing in place. So it keeps out air, keeps out water.

Very handy for the tree, not very handy for you if you put it on your garden because it’s gonna do the same thing in your garden even though it’s shredded to bits. So what they do is they skin the trees and they peel off all the bark, they shred it, and it’s a landscape material. And if you want mulch that does not build soil, that does not allow air or water in, then it’s for you. But if you want to improve your soil and make it like a sponge, you need the whole plant chipped up.

Leaves, or grass clippings, or straw, or any kind of thing that is organic, that has died, and that will decompose. And especially if it’ll decompose quickly where you’re living and where you’re gardening.

Now the wood chips are great for paths. Those bark chips, I don’t even know where I want that. You’ll have to think about it; is there a place where we could use bark chips where we don’t want to build soil? I don’t know. I don’t even think dog runs are appropriate because I’m not sure that’s good for the dog’s feet.

But wood chips. You can get free arborist chips. There’s a service and they operate all over the place. Maybe not in the smallest little town, but all over the place. And ChipDrop is a service that is free to you. And it connects gardeners who need wood chips with arborists who have them. It’s a lot of wood chips and you can run afoul of chip drops.

So watch the videos about what it is and all that and be specific about what you don’t want and what you want. And if you’ve decided it’s time for a chip drop, put 40 bucks in there and that’s a little tip to the arborist, and you’ll be surprised how fast you’ll get the chip request filled and how nice those arborists were.

I put in a whole bunch of stuff I didn’t want. Like I didn’t want ivy and I didn’t want knotweed and I didn’t want, you know, blackberry. You know, so I just put in all the things I didn’t want. An arborist actually called me to ask me if what he had would meet my needs. And I was like, absolutely. It was the most beautiful pile of chips I’ve ever gotten. It was like five to seven yards. So it was kind of small. Usually, they’re 10 or more.

And we’ve definitely faced big ChipDrops. And you might do that every couple of years. It’s a great way to freshen up all your beds and build soil and that kind of thing. You don’t even need cardboard as long as you bury it like mulch a foot deep or deeper. You can just pile it all around. Now you always want to keep mulch away from the living part of the plant, so not right up to the trunk or stem. We always want that they think, what did say? I’m not even sure I like the donut thing, but I can’t think of anything better.

But trees like donuts, it’s one of those sayings. So all around the tree, like a six inch barrier, that’s mulch free. And you can just weed that by hand and it’s a very small amount and the rest can all be mulch.

Erin Hoover (26:18)
Hah.

Lisa Taylor (26:25)
And you’ll just need to watch the mulch that it doesn’t fall into the mulch free zone. Mulch all the way out to the drip line. You’ll never have to mow underneath trees and things. For perennials, I think it’s great for paths and for all kinds of garden beds, but for your annuals, I wouldn’t use wood chips. I’d use something else that’s a little bit lighter, more herbaceous.

So like, grass clippings or straw or plants that you’ve chopped up that you can use as a mulch. You can even use like, and I know this is weird, but if you’re growing some tomatoes or tropical heat-loving plants, a lot of times we’ve used that red mulch, a plastic mulch on top of the surface of the soil, keeps weeds down, increases the heat in the soil, and you can still water and whatnot and peel it back and add compost.

So something like that might also be something to try when we’re mulching.

Ideas for Different Mulching Needs

Erin Hoover (27:29)
Yeah, I’ve had good luck with straw and usually, sometimes you’ll get seeds in it that’ll sprout, but usually they’re right on the surface and they just come right out really easy.

Lisa Taylor (27:38)
Yeah, it’s like more organic matter. Yeah, so, and it’s an annual crop. If it does, I mean, you might have been sowing that on purpose as a cover crop, those seeds from those oats at a different time of the year.

So we talked about mulching, we talked about building soil, and here’s the other, you know, that, mulching is gonna really help.

Water Management Strategies

Watering the soil right at the soil surface. People used to say, oh, I stopped growing vegetables because I couldn’t afford the water. I was like, what are you doing? I mean, our water bill only goes up like maybe 20 bucks through, you know, through the summer. It really doesn’t increase a lot. Depends on what we’re doing. We’ve been doing a lot of landscape overhauls, so we have been watering a little bit more in the summer to establish those plants, but they will be drought-tolerant.

So, once they are established, then we will water them seldomly. Also think about how you might sequester water on your property so that it can…can soak in slowly and be absorbed and replenish the aquifer, where it’s not really going to go anywhere. It’s just going to stay there. We talk about landscaping or adding contours. So there’s any time we have a little valley, a little dip and a rise. So we might call those berms or swales. I think we’re moving more and more toward avoiding a flat yard.

Saving Water by Rethinking Lawn Spaces

Right? I mean, it was always like this big flat yard. Well, now we’re seeing more people adding contours. So let’s say you have a flat yard that just goes to the sidewalk and then to the street and the storm drain. And seriously, folks, the grass in your yard is not absorbing anything. It’s so compacted that if you were to dig down, if you were to stick your moisture meter in your grass, even after big rain events, you might be surprised how not wet it is. So water just comes off your roof and onto the grass and right out to the street. And, but let’s say out near the street, you were to make a berm.

It could, it could be one that you mow, right? Just, you know, or it could be a berm that suddenly is a garden, right? A garden bed, but we want a berm, maybe a foot tall. And so as the water comes out off the roof, it meets the berm, and it can’t go out to the street.

If we can make that area where the berm is more absorbent by by tilling it, removing some grass, making it an absorbent garden bed, then we can really help ourselves and everybody else because we’re slowing water, we’re sequestering it on site, we’re re-charging our aquifers, and we’re helping to keep that storm drain infrastructure from being overwhelmed, because as the climate changes, we are seeing bigger rain events than I can ever remember.

I mean, and you know, like every year we’re going to be an unprecedented flooding, another hundred-year flood. I don’t mean to make light of it because it really really damages properties and people and animals and habitat. And so if we can anticipate that, anticipate that we’re gonna have a lot of rain, what can we do to maybe move that rain to a place where it can be sequestered, add features that also help sequester it, build that healthy soil, and rethink our lawns.

I think that if you ever had chafer beetle issues, like if you go out and look at your lawn and suddenly it looks like something has just dug up everything in your lawn, it was probably crows, squirrels, raccoons, possums digging after the chafer beetle larva, which must taste delicious. Well, the chafer beetle is an invasive species, and it’s really a problem for people who like grass lawns, and the chafer beetle larva doesn’t like things that aren’t grass.

So you could replace your grass lawn with an alternative seed mix, right? So the eco lawn’s been around for a long time, but they’ve really gone a long way with things that are like play and pet mix, with miniature clovers, with all kinds of different broadleafs that if you just let it grow a little taller, it’ll flower and suddenly you’re a pollinator patch.

And because it’s not a grass species, it’s going to be more what I think what we like to call it is a living lawn. Because if it’s got quite a bit of diversity, it’s going to be an ecosystem, whereas your grass lawn, sadly, is just really like nothing. It’s just a wasteland. I used to call it a desert, but then I realized like deserts are really diverse. You know, they’re really full of life, even though they’re dry. And a grass lawn just really isn’t. It’s just a wasteland.

There’s just not a lot going on with it. So if you’ve had some trouble and these other lawns require less water, less mowing. If you’ve got more moss than lawn, let the moss grow. There are always at least three kinds of moss growing together, usually more like five or more. So you can add diversity, and you never have to mow it, stays green most of the year and is our native ground cover, right?

So grass is just a ground cover. If we can think of it that way, I think a lot of people are, this is no mow May, I know we’ll probably broadcast this later, but it’s a whole movement of, know, letting the plants grow and flower for pollinators in early spring. And I just did it unintentionally a couple of years ago. I just turned around and then I turned back, and I was like, holy cow, I’ve got a meadow. It was beautiful. I loved it. And then I had to get a scythe to mow it down when it got to be all hay. But what I saw was just such life.

Right? And so now I have patches and there, and there’s some cities that are doing this selective mowing. The City of Redmond does this. So in their park spaces, they’ll leave some places unmowed for a month or whatever. And then they’ll mow it and leave other places unmowed at other times. They just kind of move it around. And so it looks kind of weird. You’re like, well, somebody didn’t do a very good job mowing, but they’re, doing it on purpose because when you let those plants grow eight or 10 inches tall or taller, they flower. And suddenly you’re like, my goodness, look at all the diversity.

I’ve got little patches that I’m selectively mowing right now. And so I noticed that my grass, I use natural lawn care. I don’t have much grass, but I, I let the clippings lay, I let the other plants grow. I never water or fertilize it, and it stays green almost the whole year. So, again, my soil is different than your soil, and whatever I’ve got, we’re at the bottom of a hill. So we’ve got really silty soil, and in the backyard, we hardly have to water really, even in the hardest drought times.

Preparing for Drought Resilience

That was like a little aside that didn’t have anything to do with watering or growing veg during water scarcity, but you know, a third of the water we use in the United States goes out into the landscape. So that’s a lot of water.

If you can change what you’re growing and think about drought-tolerant native plants and native plants from regions that are just a little bit outside of our zone, we warmed up in Seattle and King County area in our hardiness zone. So now we can look at Oregon, Northern California, and see if there are other similar natives, natives that are, you know, cousins of our own, that will grow here and not become a problem.

So the other thing I found is that just know that during, like, I remember we had like a heat bomb, the first of its kind. And then two years later, everybody was like, the trees in the parks are dying. It must be so hot this year. And really, it was from two years ago. So, a lot of plants in your landscape, they don’t express their stress for a couple of years, you don’t even know if like that deep freeze we had is gonna kill my whatever, or that heat bomb in June is gonna be the end of all the monkey puzzle trees in Seattle.

I saw that happen, and it took two years for that to really manifest. So just know that sometimes it takes a long time to know and to do your best when it occurs, so make sure your mulch is in place. And you can add some water. Again, just water at the right time. Don’t overwater, but some things like, you know, some rosemary, some Mediterranean plants that never need water around here ever, drought-tolerant, lovely, during those really, really hard drought times, they may need water a couple of times.

So maybe twice a month during July and August and once in September, you know, just kind of have to be ready to do some things you haven’t done before. Like I’ve never watered my rhodie in the summer, but when we get an early heat bomb that lasts a really long time. And now, when I say heat bomb, that’s the one that goes over a hundred degrees, and it’s just hard on everybody. I might want to help it out. Putting umbrellas up to protect plants or covering them with Reemay can also be protective.

So, just being ready, being nimble, I think, as things change, being ready for the extremes.

Designing Your Space to Use Less Water

Erin Hoover (37:33)
So can you think of some design examples; you talked about the berms, other ways that could help preserve water or use less water.

Lisa Taylor (37:38)
Yeah. Yeah. Or just preserve plants and give them more protection. So we always like to group things according to their needs and usually that sun and water needs. So that can be very helpful. And we always say that and I think, what does that mean? And so it’s just like if plants need water several times a week, they can all be grouped together. They like full sun and they need water several times a week or they need sun, but they really don’t need a lot of water once they’re established, right? So, according to needs.

The other thing is to avoid standalone things. Some of the monkey puzzle, I’m a monkey puzzle fan, and I just noticed them in the landscape, and they’re just a really cool tree that’s just about the hardiest thing you could ever imagine. They were around during the dinosaurs. It’s like one of those things you can plant, and nothing’s gonna eat it.

And I see a lot of them in the Northwest, and they really took a hit, a lot of them, especially ones that just stood by themselves out in the middle of nowhere. They had no protection. had nobody else around them to give them support or protection. So I think planting in layers, planting in guilds, that is plants that all like to work together to do different things in our different heights and occupy different spaces in the garden.

Planting Strategies for Saving Water in a Changing Climate

Erin Hoover (39:06)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa Taylor (39:07)

So for edibles, we might talk about food forests, know, and that’s these guilds are usually centered around a fruit tree or a nut tree or larger species that creates a canopy and then we have sort of shrubs that also create food, but also create this other canopy. And then down to some bioaccumulators that help make good soil and bring in nutrients, and then some root crops or whatever. So we have all these different layers.

And we used to talk about this even outside of edibles. And that is planting in layers for wildlife because birds don’t just go from the canopy to the ground. They flip from one place to the next. All those different layers provide harbor, safe passage to get from food to home.

But I think also plants like to be together. That’s how they develop. That’s how they grow. And so when you’ve got all the different layers, plants occupying the different space, I think they support each other much, much better. And you may have some things that just have terrible sunburn, but you know, next year they’ll come back, chances are.

We have a shade garden on one side, but it gets, you know, a little bit of sun, just, hmm not very long, but it was long enough during extreme heat that some Solomon Seal just got burned to a crisp. And, you know, it was like, ooh, but next year, just fine. And sometimes we just have to wait a year to find out, like, is it dead or is it going to come back? So be patient. And I would just try to avoid trying to make up for not doing stuff, right? Like, it’s really hot.

I should water everything really well. You know, it’s like, you should just keep, be consistent and water things as they need to be watered. I would be more inclined to be like, let’s get some mulch down, rather than like, let’s water a whole bunch before. But during those hot times, if you’ve got new plants and you’ve just sunk a lot of money into that, you’re going to have to do some watering, and you just have to do it in the right way that you don’t use as much and don’t waste any.

Having said that, I think that we may find that planting in the spring is not going to be as easily sustained as things change with, with climate change and all. And I’ve always advocated fall planting anyway. It’s a great time to plant, easy on the gardener and easy on the plant, but sadly, not so easy at the nursery, because they’re programmed to sell you stuff in the spring. But they’ll have to change too. And the plants are available then too, if they just plan on it.

Sometimes you have to buy things earlier and keep them in a capillary bed so that you can easily keep them watered and they can grow until you can plant them out in the garden. There’s like a really nice six-week period late September, very beginning of November, when it’s just a perfect time to plant and a great time to make divisions and other things in your garden. Things are mild. They’ve just stopped kind of growing. They haven’t gone dormant. The soil is still warm enough to grow a little bit, but it’s cooling down, and the rain’s coming.

And as the rains come and the plants get moved or planted, they look dormant on the up above, but all kinds of action is going on down below. The roots are getting established, and they’re starting to really grow underneath the ground so that in the spring, all those things you planted in the fall or divided and moved around in the fall are going to be ready to go. so it’s I think a cultural technique that we’re going to see more and more of because our springs are just, they just become so unpredictable with weather and moisture.

Erin Hoover (43:17)
Yeah, if we buy something in the spring, we have a protected place that we keep them, and we kind of call it our nursery, and we’ll keep it there for the summer. And so that we can plant it out in the fall because our nurseries just don’t have the selection in the fall yet.

Lisa Taylor (43:25) Yeah.

Yeah. And a lot of, a lot of gardeners and landscapers won’t plant anything after now. I mean, it’s May now, and I don’t mean everything. We’re talking big stuff, trees, shrubs, larger plants. You can plant annuals, flowers, herbs, and those kinds of thing anytime. In fact, we’re just about ready to move summer crops out to the garden. But we were just talking about more perennial things, bigger things that will last in your garden over time.

Small Shifts to Make the Biggest Difference in Saving Water

Erin Hoover (43:40)
Mm-hmm.

So what do you think are one or two small shifts that’ll make the biggest difference for someone who’s just starting to think about water use?

Lisa Taylor (44:10)

I think mulch and soil building are big important things. And so I think if you’re not already using mulch and compost to your advantage, you should and explore other ways to build healthy soil as a sponge and build it everywhere, not just in your veggie beds, because those very absorbent garden beds are places where we can slow and sequester.

You don’t have to do anything big, like try to dig a channel or direct water. You just have a place that is very absorbent. It’s going to add and going to help. So, starting with the soil, get some good tools and keep them leak-free, right? And water, water when your plants need it and water correctly, right? At the soil.

I think the last one might be too, you know, it’s pretty intensive to grow annual plants, those are things that just grow one year or two years, and then they flower, make fruit, and be done. And then I think maybe, and, and perennials just, they don’t need as much input as far as compost or fertilizer or water.

They have a whole different, more complex relationship with microbes in the soil. And so I think that moving and exploring more perennial ways to grow food for yourself it’s going to just increase diversity. You’ll still be able to do plenty of annuals, but I think growing things that are perennial edibles, it just gives you some peace of mind. This is a plant that doesn’t really require a lot of me but gives a lot.

Erin Hoover (45:54)
Well, that’s perfect because last time you were here, we talked about edible perennials. So we’ll link to that. And so we can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. One thought that came to me when you talk about leaking, one thing that we’ve started doing is we buy the little rubber gaskets, little rubber washers that go in the female end of the hose in bulk.

Lisa Taylor (45:58)
Oh yeah.

Erin Hoover (46:15)
And we just automatically replace them every year because they dry out, they crack, and that’s where a lot of the leaks come from.

Lisa Taylor (46:15)
That’s the first place every season inside every bit of tool, watering tool, there’s the rubber gaskets. And I buy several different kinds because I have different tools that want different kinds of, but it’s the most inexpensive way to keep your system leak-free. Excellent.

Final Thoughts about Saving Water

Erin Hoover (46:37)
Mm-hmm. Any final thoughts about saving water?

Lisa Taylor (46:50)
I just want you to water when when plants need to and I want to encourage you to check out a moisture meter this year to and a timer. If you don’t have a timer, a timer and a moisture meter and maybe that ball valve. You deserve that ball valve. Do you have one, Erin?

Erin Hoover (47:07)
Not for my hose. Actually, I have two on my irrigation system, our vegetable garden, we have drip irrigation.

Lisa Taylor (47:15)

nice. Well, think about one for the end of your hose. It’s so great. You’re gonna be like, my God, I can’t believe I waited so long to do this.

Erin Hoover (47:22)
I’ve seen ones, you know, that they sell, that you can screw on the end of your hose, but usually they’re all plastic or whatever. And then they last like a month and then they’re broken.

Lisa Taylor (47:30)
They cost like five bucks. Yeah. So.

Erin Hoover (47:35)
Yeah, and if you got to replace them several times a year, that’s you might as well buy the ball valve.

Lisa Taylor (47:39)
Might as well buy one that you can, yeah, and just like quality tools last a lifetime. So check it out. I think there are some no name brands also out there, but as I said, the Dramm has a really long handle that just makes it a dream to water. So make it easy on yourself, get some good tools, water on, or don’t water on, water off, Erin.

Erin Hoover (48:00)
All right. Thanks so much for being here today. It was a great talk.

Lisa Taylor (48:07)
I hope you call me back. I’d love to share more of my organic gardening tips with your listeners.

Erin Hoover (48:13)
Perfect, thanks.

Lisa Taylor (48:15)
Bye now.