My Ugly Water-Saving Garden Solution

May 11, 2009 Gardening

ugly-watering

We’ve been saving the gallon jugs from the apple juice we buy for about a year now. These containers are now being used to water our garden.

No, they aren’t pretty. But it’s the same principle as the Aqua Globes you can buy.

They’re working pretty well, although we don’t have quite enough bottles saved up for the whole garden yet. As you can see in the picture, they’re not that far apart, maybe a foot, foot and a half at most.

The nice thing is that the water is going right into the soil. No water sprayed into the air. Since we’re looking at a Stage 2 drought and mandatory water conservation coming up at the start of June, we’re trying to figure out how best to keep our garden alive with a minimum of water. Oh, and a minimum of budget. We don’t really have the finances for installing drip irrigation right now.

I have given some thought to the BPA in plastic issue with this, but I suspect it’s not that different from the yard’s sprinkler system, which I believe is installed using PVC plastic anyhow. The bottles are a #5 plastic. They’re not supposed to leech anything harmful… then again they are in the heat of the sun every day so who knows. Not exactly how they were meant to be used.

On the other hand, a lot of recyclers don’t take anything other than #1 or 2 plastics, which I think is true in my area. That means we’re keeping these out of the landfill for a while. I’m not too happy as a rule about buying things in plastic, but it’s hard to entirely avoid. Finding a new use for the plastic is the next best thing.

Related posts:

  1. No Room for a Garden? Find a Community Garden
  2. Are You Watering Your Garden Efficiently?
  3. The Start of Our Front Yard Garden
  4. Really Pleased With Our Water Usage
  5. Time to Get My Garden Growing!

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 9:16 am and is filed under Gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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7 Responses to “My Ugly Water-Saving Garden Solution”

  1. Deoxy Says:

    May 11th, 2009 at 5:46 pm

    Did you do anything special with the jugs or just turn them upside down full of water?


  2. Stephanie Says:

    May 12th, 2009 at 9:12 am

    Just turned them upside down full of water. Depending on how hot it is, it takes a couple of days to a week for each one to empty.


  3. Green SAHM » Blog Archive » 8 Tips to Prepare for a Greener Summer Says:

    May 12th, 2009 at 10:10 am

    [...] water in your garden. You can install drip irrigation, for example. We’re currently using gallon apple juice jugs for watering, as I posted yesterday. It’s rather like using those Aqua Globes you see on television, [...]


  4. jana Says:

    May 14th, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    Great idea….I love to use up what I have. I think I’m going to try this with my new topsy turvy tomato planter.


  5. Really Please With Our Water Usage » Green SAHM Says:

    June 29th, 2009 at 10:25 am

    [...] garden, which I will truly miss when we move, has been one of our big outdoor water changes. The ugly watering solution really seems to be helping us cut down on how much water that [...]


  6. Linda Peppin Says:

    July 8th, 2009 at 6:36 am

    This is a great idea. We’ve just acquired an allotment and I suspect this would be a great way to help with the watering. Do you think it would work with large plastic cola or lemonade bottle?


  7. Stephanie Says:

    July 8th, 2009 at 10:23 am

    It does, but the bottles we use have thicker sides, so the don’t squeeze in so much as the water flows out. Saves the trouble of trying to flex the sides back out when refilling.