How to save water when you water your plants?

Water, water, water... for everything we do we require water. States are fighting for it, and even the Supreme Court has had to step in to try to solve issues relating to this!

When watering our plants, we sometimes end up using a lot of water. This got us thinking. Could we use less water and yet still keep our plants healthy? Turns out we can!

There are a number of ways this could be done. But here are a few simple ones that should be fairly easy to execute.

• Water in the early morning or late afternoon. This reduces loss of water due to evaporation.

• Mulch your plants’ soil surface with bark chippings, compost or straw to trap moisture. - Bark chippings and compost are available online. It may be difficult to source straw in the cities, but it should be available away from the cities where agriculture is predominant.

• Save your Cooking Water. If you steam or boil vegetables, save the water rather than tipping it down the sink!  It is full of nutrients and when cooled, makes a free fertilizer for watering your plants.

• Add organic matter, like compost, to the plants. You can also add vegetable scraps, lawn clippings, worm castings and leaves to this.

• Avoid over-watering. Sometimes we unknowingly overwater the plants, making the water seep out of the pots and go down the drain. Over-watering plants also leaches valuable nutrients from the soil, causes loss of oxygen in the soil pore spaces increasing the chance of root rot and other diseases from suffocation; and wastes a precious resource. So let’s use water carefully!

Enjoy your plants!