Growing Strawberries in a Self Irrigating Gutter (SIG).

...overflow pipe that drains to the street. The float valve is connected to a rainwater barrel. You can read more about how this barrel is constructed in one of our older posts. Since SIGs need to be watered even when it’s raining, this is a perfect use for a rain barrel. I will have to fill the barrel with municipal water during our dry season. Problems There’s a lot of plastic here, specifically PVC, which is an environmental and health disaster. I...

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Water Harvesting Rock Star Brad Lancaster

...ITg Spend an hour with Brad at his Tucson compound circa 2016: He calls the 1/8th of an acre site he shares with his brother’s family, his “living laboratory”. Here he plants around the greywater from his outdoor shower, bathtub and washing machine. He captures 100,000 gallons of rainwater per year on their property and surrounding public right-of-way. He cooks with a solar oven and heats his water using a 2 salvaged, conventional gas heaters stri...

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Permaculture Design Course at the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano

...homescale vs. large scale, appropriate scale technologies. Presentation on rainwater and greywater basics, fundamental earthworks basics, observation and mapping water excersize, greywater workshop, rain barrel building demo APRIL 13 / WATER OFF-SITE – including larger scale home systems design, hands-on rain barrel/greywater systems, watershed basics, home install of 1,500 gl tank, tour of home and greywater systems, tour of nearby Trabuco Creek,...

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Garden Update Part II: The Good the Bad and a Lot of Ugly

...nts. Part of the reason for the lushness of the yard is that we divert the rainwater from the roof to a pipe that runs 20 feet away from the house and into the center of the yard. We get a lot of rain concentrated in February and March and it’s a whole lot easier to store it in the earth than to try to capture it in a tiny barrel. Said pipe awkwardly crosses a path, however, something our landscape professional Laramee Haynes will address. The pip...

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Decomposed Granite as Mulch: A very bad idea

...anite (DG) used as a mulch. Put some plastic landscape fabric down (blocks rainwater in our climate, fyi) and top that plastic with DG. They then punch some holes in the DG/plastic and pop in succulents and maybe a rosemary bush or two. By the time the yard becomes a sad, desertified tangle of unhappy succulents and crabgrass, the flippers are long gone. I’ve got a big issue with DG as mulch. In order for DG to look good, it’s got to be compacted...

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