Gardening with Less Water: Low-Tech, Low-Cost Techniques; Use up to 90% Less Water in Your Garden

This book details the reality that droughts are becoming more common or more severe with global climate change. Modern massive irrigation projects can wastefully lead to overexploitation of surface and underground fresh water resources; when the appropriate method explained in this book is applied to large irrigation it can greatly reduce the waste of fresh water. The book is a short read that focuses on gardening techniques that significantly reduce the waste of water that are typical of surface irrigation. There are also sections of this that communicate the pivotal role that rain water collection is to reducing the waste of fresh water not just for home gardens but also for community gardens, schools, and new residential subdivisions.

Good book if you want know more about farming and watering.

am old enough and impatient enough that a lot of the rhetoric about how and where and who is using these techniques just annoyed me. Then again, am familiar with a lot of this information already, so my interest was just how to improve my system. AND DID I GET THAT! So if you are not aware of these alternative techniques, you may enjoy the background. If you just want to get on with the facts, skip those pages.neither soaker hose nor drip irrigation have worked well for me here in the desert southwest. have been using what I call Ollas and what the author calls capsules for awhile now. Even so, have to refill those ollas about every two to three days depending on heat, and how big the plants are. To find the Ollas once the plants have grown in, added extensions so the openings stood over a foot higher. But refilling using a hose caused them to "burp" has the air tried to escape as the water poured in. was so frustrated with the entire system, basically shut down my garden for this year. Just have a few self-watering containers that use the Wick system and a few planter boxes using Ollas. Reading this book was the gigantic DUH of logic: self-filling system. Since my gardens are uphill from my rain water containers will likely have to put in some 50-60 gallon tanks in the gardens themselves for the system, and just fill those tanks every now and again from my rain water tanks. That will still be a lot less work than what I've had in the past. Am looking forward to getting started on these new systems and having a blossoming garden once again.

I have a very large garden in arid part of the US and very expensive municipal water. I found this book to be a readable and thought provoking survey of watering techniques and systems the author claims to be dramatically more efficient than even drip irrigation. Given the extreme expense of the clay pot solutions and virtual impossibility of obtaining some of the mentioned products would have liked to see additional info on use of easily obtainable such as perforated plastic drain pipe and sewer pipe. However a worthwhile book from one of my favorite publishers.

I ordered this book with a bit of trepidation; I am very familiar with drip irrigation and a bit of rainwater catchment, so I thought I would be familiar with most of the material it presented. I couldn't have been more wrong... virtually all of the information in this book is new to me. Many of the techniques are simple and cheap. The techniques are proven; tested in dry environments around the World. As drought continues to increase in the desert southwest, the material in this book will become more critical. This book is as important as Sunset Western Garden Book, which I consider the Bible of western gardening.

Update: Week three, and everything is growing well! This is the first time I've ever managed to actually grow something without over or under watering it. See the third picture to see how everything is growing, in sunny, cold, 10% humidity El Paso!I admit it, in some things I'm lazy. That usually includes yard work. However, my wife and I recently purchased ten acres and built a home. My wife and I want to grow some of our own vegetables. It helps save on the wallet and (judging by what some friends have brought into work) home grown vegetables can taste a lot better than what you buy in the store. So I was looking for a way to (1) grow some of our own vegetables, (2) in a way that wouldn't take *too* much of my time, and (3) would be friendly with my well. Oh, and it had to be simple enough for a newbie that hasn't ever grown stuff before. And not too expensive (LOL). This book is excellent on all counts.It's easy to read and understand, and it just makes sense. And the process described is very inexpensive! I'm currently mobilized and just wanted to try it out, so I bought a big pot at Walmart and a smaller one to put inside it. Bought some potting soil and some seed, and voila! You can see from the picture that the small pot is keeping the soil moist next to it. It's only been one day, so we'll see how it goes. But what's really cool is that the process is so simple that I was able to describe it to my wife over the phone and now she's trying it at home as well. It doesn't get any better than that.If you're interested in gardening, pick up this book. You won't regret it.

This book covers irrigation and rainwater harvesting methods for different use cases, provides examples of places where they're deployed, has useful tables and diagrams, and overall is a well composed book. Towards the end there is a whole section on dealing with HOAs and local governments resistance to more efficient, more ecologically sound horticulture.Would highly recommend for those in San Diego county, as it appears the methods are well targeted and suited for our climate and soil.The pages are quite thick on the paperback.

With drought conditions showing up everywhere, Gardening with Less Water, discusses numerous methods of growing more flowers, herbs, vegetables, shrubs and trees with far less water then we currently use. The books shows simple effective methods for a variety of situations, clear instructions for building the solution, and lots of good data to help set appropriate expectations. A must read for home gardening and urban farming.

The techniques presented in the book are easily accessible for those who want to work in water use optimization systems. Recommends it to everyone interested in the subject, whether for private gardens and orchards or for those who wish to carry out large-scale actions, whether in community actions, schools, cities or in the countryside.

This book is so interesting! I don’t live in a drought area now, but I used to and so I want to try some of these out just so I can do my part! The projects are easy to do and made with inexpensive material options so it’s something I can get started on right away :)

De gran ayuda para el diseño de jardines, huertos y sistemas productivos. Ahorrar en irrigación sin duda es de las mejores inversiones en la agricultura.

As described, written for the USA, but still relevant for Australia.

Técnicas simples e bem descritas. O livro é bem interessante