20

Bibliography
Plantmaps.com. January 2014.
Northern Colorado Water Conservency District. northernwater,org. June 2013
Phone conversations with Fort Collins Utilities. July 2013
VegeNag. Types of Irrigation Systems http://blog.vegenag.com/2010/02/types-of-drip
-irrigation-systems/
US EPA. Greenacres: Landscaping with Native Plants Accessed March 2014. http://
www.epa.gov/greenacres/index.html
Lancaster, Brad. Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and beyond.


Basic Gardening Zine Series #4
2
CONTENTS

Water Quality.3
Where our water comes from...4
Basic Irrigation Equipment..6
Types of Irrigation Systems...8
Water Pressure..11
Watering your Garden (techniques and tips)..12
How much water do I need?..............................13
Greywater and Rainwater..16
Xeriscaping.19


The basic garden zine series is an effort to condense the boggling amount of in-
formation relating to gardening into a simple and easily replicable booklet. Karen
Seed wrote it and drew the illustrations, unless otherwise noted. May your garden
grow abundant!

This is the Colorado (USDA zone 5) version

Other titles:
Soil & Compost
Bugs
Food Crops
Starting Seeds
Irrigation
Harvesting & Food Preservation
Seed Saving
19
Xeriscaping . According to the US Environmental Protection Agen-
cy, There are about 20 million acres of lawn in the US, using ten times as much
of the fertilizers and pesticides per acre as farmland. Most importantly, grassy
lawns use 30-60% of the fresh water in urban areas (depending on the climate)!
Its clear weve gone a bit overboard!
Xeriscaping is a form of gardening that eliminates the need for added water.
This is done by using drought-tolerant, native and regionally appropriate plants,
instead of imported water intensive plants. Usually, native flowers are also a
great source of food for pollinators like bees and butterflies!
The type of plants used depends on the region, and there are many. These
are just a few good plants for Colora-
do:
-Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)
-Yucca (Yucca spp.)
-Prickly Pear Cactus (Opuntia spp.)
-Penstemon (Penstemon spp.)
-Sagebrush (Artemesia Tridentata)
For more info on xeriscaping in Colorado, check out Colorado State Uni-
versitys Planttalk service: http://www.ext.colostate.edu/ptlk/

RESOURCES AND RECCOMMENDED READINGS
Rainwater Harvesting by Brad Lancaster. Lancaster and his team devel-
oped these techniques in the desert of Arizona. This two-volume book is
everything you need to know about harvesting and using rainwater.
Check out his website also at www.harvestingrainwater.com

www.irrigationtutorials.com This site has a lot of really useful information
about irrigation, irrigation systems, products, and such.

Toolbox for Sustainable City Living by Scott Kellogg and Stacey Pettigrew.
These two were co-founders of the legendary Rhizome Collective in Aus-
tin, TX. The book is an extremely practical rundown of how to obtain,
grow, and deal with lifes necessities in an urban environment: food, wa-
ter, waste, energy, bioremediation. Illustrations by Juan Martinez of the
Beehive Collective are great too.
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Earthworks
For water harvesting
Simply put, Earthworks is a term for all types of landscaping features
that passively irrigate the vegetation through slowing down, storing, and
sinking rainfall into a landscape instead of letting it flow off. Here are
some techniques that help.
Swales:
Swales are long trenches cut on a
level contour into the side of a
slope. They are not ditches or wa-
ter channels; theyre not meant to
move water anywhere. Rather, they
catch water flowing down a slope
and sink it into the ground.

Saucers:
Saucers are dug around trees or
shrubs to direct water towards the
trees roots. The tree itself should be
planted higher up so that the roots
can still get oxygen.
The wasteful path to scarcity.
The stewardship path to abundance
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3
Water Quality and Types of Water
Potable: This is water that has been treated by a city to be safe for drinking. This is the
water that is accessible to the public via our sinks and spigots.




Non-potable: the raw water used for irrigation in city parks is straight from the reser-
voir or river. It has not been treated and could contain disease-causing organisms. Usu-
ally, the public does not have ready access to this type of water.




Greywater: this is water that is left over from showers, washing dishes, and washing
clothes.





Blackwater: raw sewage water.





Rainwater: It falls from the sky. How clean it is depends on how much pollution is in
the air.

4
Where our water comes from
All of the water in our area, Fort Collins, Colorado, comes from two sources:
1) the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, a system of dams and resevoirs which
collects water from the headwaters of the Colorado River on the western
slope of the rockies, and pumps it across the continental divide in a big tun-
nel.






















Map of Colorado Big Thompson Project and West/ East Slope. Image Source: northernwater.org
17
A very simple rainwater catchment is the
rain barrel. You can get a 55 gallon drum
from a recycling center and attach it to the
gutter of your home. Filters are important to
keep debris from the barrel: this can be a
simple screen or a bucket drilled with holes
and filled with sand or wood chips.
This is a system of rain barrels hooked up to
a gutter in Portland, OR.
This butterfly roof design
channels rainwater into a
large barrel.
This is an exam-
ple of rainwater
being used to
irrigate a garden.
Because the gar-
den is lower in
elevation, the
water naturally
flows there from
the rain barrel.

Illustrastion by Juan
Martinez; from
Toolbox For Sustain-
able City Living by
Kellog/Pettigrew
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COLLECTING RAINWATER AND
GREYWATER!
Greywater is water that has been used once before in the household: for washing
dishes and hands, showering, and doing laundry. It can be used for irrigating gardens,
but there is risk for contamination with disease, especially if the water was used in
preparation of raw meat, or if it had contact with feces (IE after washing your hands in
the bathroom, or diaper washing in households with young children). It should not be
put onto leafy greens or any veggies that would be eaten soon. Best used for watering
trees, flowers, compost piles, and the like. Constructed wetlands can also be built,
where the greywater is routed to a tank planted with aquatic life, which cleans the

Rainwater of course, falls from the sky. It can be collected in two main ways:
1) Cistern: by catching runoff from a roof and collecting it in a container of some
kind. You can then put the water into a watering can or an irrigation system.

Here is an equation for calculating how much rainwater you can harvest on one
roof:
(Area of roof in square feet) * (Inches of rain per year) * (.625) = Gallons of water
per year.
You can figure out your annual rainfall at www.plantmaps.com

2) Earthworks: See next page!

WATER LAW: In Colorado, using greywater is illegal, because of the water laws that
establish rights to all the water in the regiontechnically, the greywater belongs to
someone else. However, applying greywater and rainwater to the garden does return it
to the same water system to be used downstream. Collecting rainwater via earthworks
is not illegal. Collecting rainwater in a cistern in Colorado is illegal if you live in the-
municipal water system, but its legal if you are not hooked up to the water system (i.e.
you have a well and a sceptic system). Check the laws in your local region.
Blackwater from toilets can contain disease-causing organisms and should never be
used for irrigation without treatment. But might we suggest that our society could be a
better place if we used dry composting toilets, instead of polluting one of our most pre-
cious resources with human manure!
5
Map of Colorado Big Thompson Project and West/ East Slope. Image Source: northernwater.org
2) The Cache la Poudre River basin.
The water companies in the city facilitate the distribution and delivery of the
water through the sewage systems. They measure how much water is used via
water meters, and charge the customers accordingly.
6

Basic Irrigation Equipment
A knowledge of these simple parts will make installing and repairing
irrigation a little easier.

1)Water spigot/hose hydrant/hose bibb/valve:
This is the water source for most places that are
hooked up to a sewage system. The standard spig-
ot size is a 3/4 threaded male connector. In
rare cases the spigot is 1/2. The spacing of the
threads is known as pipe threading.

2) Hose: Hoses are made of either vinyl or rub-
ber, or a
combination
of the two,
and some are reinforced with a web of synthetic
fiber. Vinyl hoses are cheaper, but they are much
worse quality. The vinyl will crack over time due
to exposure to sun, heat, and the elements. A rub-
ber hose is more expensive, but it will save money
by being reliable and needing less repairs. Rein-
forced hoses will last longer. No matter what they
are made up, all hoses can get worn out and crack
or burst, and if they are taken care of well, the hose
will last for a long time. Even if you have a drip
system or other irrigation system, you will need a
hose for random spot watering and filling contain-
ers. Try to invest in a good hose if you can, or look
for a high-quality used one.

3) Gasket: These are the rubber washers that are found inside the captive nut which is
the female connector on the hose. Many times, when hoses are leaking at the hose union
(where two hoses are
joined) it is because the
gasket has worn out.
Replacing the gasket will
fix the leak.



A note on hose sizes: Most stand-
ard garden hoses are 3/4" in diame-
ter. Sometimes they are the smaller
1/2" size, and In some random cas-
es, they are 5/8". Before buying
parts to repair or modify a hose,
measure it!
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15
CROP MOST CRITICAL TIME TO WATER
Beans When fowers form and during pod-forming and picking
Beets Before soil gets bone-dry
Broccoli Dont let soil dry out for 4 weeks afer transplantng
Brussel Sprouts Dont let soil dry out for 4 weeks afer transplantng
Cabbage Water frequently in dry weather for best crop
Carrots Before soil gets bone dry
Caulifower Water frequently for best crop
Celery Water frequently for best crop
Corn Needs water most during critcal periods: when tassels form and
when cobs swell
Cucumber Water frequently for best crop
Letuce/Spinach Water frequently for best crop, most important afer taking cutngs.
Onions In dry weather, water in early stage to get plants going.
Parsnips Before the soil gets bone dry
Peas When fowers form and during pod-ripening and picking
Potatoes When the size of marbles
Squash Water frequently for best crop
Tomatoes For 3 to 4 weeks afer transplantng, and when fowers and fruit
form
Critical Watering Times
There are times in a plants life cycle where it will recover from drought with little im-
pact on the harvest. There are other times when, if a plant gets too thirsty, it will nega-
tively impact the plants whole life and thus, the harvest will be lower or deformed.
Things to remember:
Germinating seeds are most vulnerable to drought.
Plants need plenty of water after they have been transplanted. The transplanting
process is a big shock for them, and if they dont have enough water, they might
not recover from the shock.
Be careful not to water too much! Roots need oxygen as well and constantly water-
logged soil is not good. There are other critical times when too much water will
damage the plants. Tomatoes that are ripening will split open if they are watered
too much. Overwatering can also cause fungal diseases like blossom-end rot in to-
matoes, peppers, squash, and eggplants.

Source: vegenag.com
14
Mulching
Mulching is the practice of putting a layer of organic material over the bare soil.
Mulching is a very important practice in organic agriculture! In addition to feeding and
protecting the soil, mulching greatly reduces the need to water.

You can use lots of things as mulch:
Grass clippings. Collect them from your lawn, from the roadside, get them from lawn
maintenance companies. Careful: Many people put herbicides on their lawns, which
WILL kill your garden. Only accept organically grown grass clippings.
Straw. Get straw bales from a local farmer. A common price is 3-5 dollars a bale, plus
delivery fee. Raw straw is full of seeds (usually wheat seeds if its wheat straw) so you
need to pre-germinate by soaking the bale with water from a hose. Then let it sit for a
week. Spoiled hay will also work and it doesnt have seeds. Craigslist is a good place to
find stuff like this.
Leaves: They blow away easily, but they are FREE. I like to collect them in Autumn by
putting ads on craigslist telling people to drop them off at a specific location. Or, just
gather them from your neighbors.
Cardboard: good as a weed barrier: it starves weeds of light, and keeps them from
growing though. Be sure to take off the tape and dont use glossy cardboard, the ink
can contain toxic ingredients.
Fabric: non-synthetic fabric will work very well! Ask at a local coffee roaster if you
can have the burlap sacks.

STORE your mulch for the season in an out-of-the way corner of the garden, and put a
tarp over it to keep it from getting wet and rotting before you can use it.
WITH MULCH WITHOUT MULCH
7
4) Teflon Tape: This is plastic tape that is wrapped
around the threads of the hose junctions in order to stop
leakage. The tape is wrapped in the direction of the
threads on the pipe, and so when the two halves are
screwed together, the tape is tightened.


5) Y-splitters. Y-
connectors can be really
useful to make your sys-
tem versatile and easy to use. The Y will allow you to
hook up two hoses to one water source, and turn one of
them or the other one on. So, you could connect your
drip irrigiation system to one side, and a hose for hand-
watering to the other side.

6) Connectors and hose-clamps. These handy things will help you repair hoses or
splice hoses together.




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Maintaining the Irrigation Equipment
Irrigation equipment can be expensive. Taking care of these tools properly will keep
them working for a long time. Here are some tips:
Dont allow hoses to freeze with water inside them. During the spring, when you
need to water during the day but it freezes at night, just drain the hose by discon-
necting both ends and holding one end up above your head.
Winterize the irrigation system by taking hoses into a shed, or coiling them and
keeping them under a tarp. The key is to not expose them to weather and light if
you dont have to.
The junctions are the weakest point. Places where the hoses connect to each oth-
er, to the spigot, etc. Take care not to place unnecessary stress at these points.
Flush out hoses if theyve been sitting for a while. Insects and small animals like
to make empty hoses their homes. Let water run through them before attaching
sprinkler heads or other fittings.
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Types of Irrigation Systems
Overhead sprinkler systems
For the home gardener, sprinklers can be easier to build because you
dont need a lot of specialized parts. Compared to a drip system, sprin-
klers use more water and they water the entire garden rather than just the
targeted food plants. Because of this, more weeds will grow in areas irri-
gated with sprinklers than with drip irrigation.

sprinkler heads. Put these on the end of a hose, and they create a sprin-
kling pattern for the water. The pattern can be circular, in which they piv-
ot or turn around a central point. Circular ones cover a certain radius, so
place them far enough apart that they will cover everything without over-
lapping! Another common pattern is the fan.






Homemade sprinkler from a pop
botle!
This is called an impact sprinkler head
Fan type
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13
How much water will the garden need?
Sometimes, we want to figure out how much water we will need to put on the garden in
the course of a season. The units that are used in measuring rainfall and irrigation on a
piece of land is the Inch. Imagine a layer of water, one inch deep, stretching across
the room. This is an inch of water, but the actual volume of the water in an inch de-
pends on how big of a surface area we are talking about.
Example:
If your room is 90 square feet, then how much water will it take to cover it by 1 inch?
90 ft
2
* (144 in2/1 ft
2
) = 12,960 in
2

12,960 in
2
* 1 in deep = 12,960 inches cubed
12,960 in
3
* (1 gallon/231 in
3
) = 56.1 gallons of water.

A general rule of thumb is that the vegetable garden will need at least 1-2 inches of wa-
ter each week during the growing season. The first source of water for the garden is the
sky. If it rained 1-2 inches in a week, you probably wont need to water. But if it only
rained .5 inches, you will need to make up the difference through irrigation. Also, the
amount you water the garden needs each month will be different because of the differ-
ences in the season. Summer months will take much more water than spring and au-
tumn, and in the winter you obviously dont water at all.

You can find the average monthly precipitation for your home, along with lots of other
data, by going to www.plantmaps.com. Type in your zip code and youre good to go!

Example: water for the month of July. Lets assume 1.5 inches is needed per week since
its a hot month.
Average July precipitation in Colorado: 1.87 inches
Size of Garden: 90 ft
2

Amt. of water needed: 90 ft
2
* (144in
2
/1 ft
2
) * 2 in/week * 4 weeks * (1 gallon/231 in
3
)
= 449 gallons
Amt. of water supplied by precipitation: 1.87 in * 90 ft
2
* (144 in
2
/ft
2
) * (1 gallon/231
in
3
)= 105 gallons.
Amt. of water you need to irrigate: 449 - 105 = 344 gallons.
If your water company charges .005 cents per gallon, then in July it will cost $1.72 to
water this garden. Of course, your rates will vary depending on the water company!
12
WATERING THE GARDEN!
(tips and tricks)
when to water?
Observation is the key to knowing when you need to water the garden.
How much you need to water depends on the type of soil, the plants, and
the heat of the day. A simple test is to just feel the soil. If you can easily
insert your finger, and if the soil feels moist, it has enough water. Pay
attention to how long it takes for it to dry out.
It is best to water the garden in the early morning, before the sun has ris-
en too high and gotten too hot. This is because the plants can use the wa-
ter most effectively if you give it to them in the morning. Plants drink
the most water when the sun is shining. In midday when the sun is very
hot, the water will evaporate before the plants can use it. Putting small
droplets of water on the plant leaves in the middle of the day is harmful
as well, because the droplets act as miniature magnifying glasses, and can
burn the leaves. If you cannot water in the morning, the late afternoon
and evening are the next best time. Most of the water will stay in the soil
for the plants to use the next day.

9
Drip systems
A drip irrigation system is basically a series of long tubes with holes in them
at regular intervals. The tubes are blocked at the ends and hooked up to a water
source. The system fills with water and releases one drip at a time onto the soil
surface. Usually, the farmers will let the drip system run for 3-5 hours at a time.
This is an example of one type of drip system, a system that uses thin-walled
drip tape.
Components:
1) Water Source
2) Main Line: This is the main hose or pipe that carries the water to the drip
tape or to the emitters. Usually it is made of 3/4 black PVC pipe, which
10
can be bought at hardware stores for about $1/foot.

3) Ts and Elbow connectors: These are hard plas-
tic pipes that are put into the main line to split it or
turn it at a 90
angle. Each side
where it connects must have a hose
clamp on it.
4) Hose clamps: these are
rings made of steel which
you tighten with a screw-
driver to keep all the parts of the drip system together

5) Emitters: The drip emitters plug into the main
drip line. They either connect to the drip tape, or
they drip water directly from the main line.
(pictured: an emitter that you plug drip tape onto).

6) Drip Tape or T-Tape: This is spe-
cially-made plastic tubing that has
holes every 8--24 inches. It can be
purchased online, or from a company
like Johnnys seeds
(www.johnnyseeds.com). Its recom-
mended that the spacing of the holes
match up with the spacing of the
crops. Drip tape can come in different thicknesses, as well. Thicker tapes
are more expensive, but they last longer.
7) End Caps/Hose Plugs: Go on the ends of the main lines in
order to stop the water from rushing out. To cap up the
8) Anchors/pins/staples: These are u-shaped
durable wires that you put in the earth to pin
the drip tape down and keep it in place. We
make ours out of coat hangers.
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Furrow Irrigation
The last main type of irrigation system is called a Furrow or Trench irrigation. This is
not common for home gardeners or veggie farmers, its usually done by large-scale
farmers growing commodities like corn, soy, beans, sugarbeets, etc. Basically they have
the fields set up with long trenches, or furrows, across the whole field. Then they open a
main supply ditch that releases water into all the furrows. They leave this open for up to
24 hours and allow the water to flow down the furrows.

WATER PRESSURE
Water pressure is measured in Pounds per Square Inch (PSI). The PSI of the water in
the municipal sewer system will depend on your local water company, and also it will
depend on the elevation of your garden. Areas on a hill will have lower pressure than
areas at the bottom of a valley.
In Fort Collins, CO, the water pressure is about 90 PSI. Calling your local water compa-
ny will allow you to determine what the pressure is.
Drip systems usually need between 2050 PSI of pressure in order to work. If the pres-
sure is too high, the line will burst at the weakest point. If the pressure is too low, it will
not work very wellthe water will be very slow coming out, and the beds furthest away
from the water source will be deprived of water.
The more complicated and big the drip system, the more holes it will have in it for wa-
ter to come out of. The more holes it has, the more water pressure is decreased over the
entire system. Therefore, if your system is too big, if you try to fill all of it at once, there
might not be enough pressure. It would be better to split the system into two or three
areas that are watered one at a time. This can be accomplished with valves that close
each side of the system from the others.
In order to decrease the water pressure from the
municipal system, you could buy a pressure regu-
lator from the hardware store. The regulator
hooks up to the hose bibb before being hooked to
the hose or drip system. Or, you could also adjust
the pressure manually by opening the valve part-
way. Playing around with the water pressure
in this way can be educational and fun. Be
prepared to fix leaks that may arise!
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A pressure regulator for a drip system just
screws into the line. They come in a variety
of pressures.