It?s time to introduce technology to your gardening and lawn care tasks.
Water Crystals
One way to cut down on the amount of watering you?ll need to do for your plants is by using Water Crystals. These are super absorbent polymers in the form of white granules?also called hydro gels, polymer crystals, or water gels.
These water gels reduce watering requirements for shrubs, trees, and lawns. They help prevent stress in your plants in times of both drought and excessive moisture. They also help irrigate crops and trees, turf grasses, lawns, plants and flowers in gardens, containers and nurseries.
Rain Barrels
If you want to go less high tech, having a rain barrel or even two can help you immensely with your watering needs. But since the theme of this article is using technology?how can you incorporate technology into your water barrel? Well, the easiest way is just with that simple technological marvel, the spigot, which you can affix to the exterior of the barrel. In this way, you can keep the rain barrel uncovered during periods of rain, but covered at all other times (which will help prevent the birth of mosquitos!), and fill your watering can from the spigot when it comes time to water your plants.
With the right kind of rain barrel, you can have it set up so that you can use it to run through your sprinkler, or automatically water your plants. You simply hook up one, two or even three barrels together, so that you have a sufficient amount of water to use. And of course during those weeks when there?s no rain, you?ll still have your regular tap water to depend on to water your plants and lawn.
On the other hand, why use a barrel, or even connect three of them together, when you can use a cistern?
If you?ve got enough space, consider building an underground cistern, of concrete, which can hold thousands of gallons of water. It?s not necessary to go underground, of course, but it does help, aesthetically speaking.
Do some research into the advisability of using rain barrels or a cistern in your location.
We decided to go low tech for watering our garden and got a couple of 80gal barrels that we linked together. We bought them from Aquabarrel (www.aquabarrel.com) and they were very easy to hook up ourselves! Happy gardening!