Nourish your little piece of the desert with rainwater harvesting

Five years ago I bought a 740-square-foot dump in midtown Tucson with a large yard full of goat head burrs and Bermuda Grass. Maybe I was a victim of too many episodes of HGTV design shows, but my plan was to transform this territorial adobe into a cute little home with a yard full of desert-friendly plants, fruit trees, and a vegetable garden-- all irrigated with rain water and grey water.

In 2007, the first phase of my remodel was to add a master bedroom suite, utility room, and covered patio-- increasing the house to a modest 1240 square feet. The second phase-- which began in 2007 and is continuing-- was to capture rain water and transform the wasteland that was my yard into a garden retreat. (The attached slide show details this process in photos.)

Before I started the process, I attended a rainwater harvesting workshop at Stone Curves Co-housing. I spent two weekends digging trenches and installing a cistern with the help of local rainwater harvesting guru Brad Lancaster, landscapers from Technicians for Sustainability, and other volunteers.

Armed with new how-to knowledge, the first step was to design my addition to divert rain water to a future cistern. The entire roof of my home and the addition was sloped toward one scupper on the west side of the house. The patio roof was slanted toward the trees on the east side of the yard.

The second phase was digging-- lots of digging. I dug large tree wells around three major trees, a pomegrante bush, and a desert hackberry in my backyard. I even dug in the rain, which is a curiously refreshing exercise in the summer. It also gives you a very clear idea of where the water is and where it goes once you start digging.

The third phase was to hire a contractor to install gutters, downspouts, and drainage pipe on the patio. Initially, three of the trees were watered with grey water from a washer in a shed in the back, and the other two were watered with runoff from the patio roof.

The fourth phase in January 2010 was to finally install a 900+ gallon cistern, dig a cistern overflow ditch, and add more gutters on my out buildings. With all of the rain that we have this winter, it has been very exciting to watch the cistern fill up repeatedly and overflow into the ditch, carrying the water to other trees. It's also been rewarding to plant bedding flowers and know that I am not wasting city water when I care for them.

The final phase will be to attach the cistern to my existing drip irrigation system and to plant fruit trees this spring and maybe a garden after the summer heat.

Using rainwater and grey water helps our desert environment by allowing you to use less ground water, thus reducing your environmental footprint. If you want to learn more about the process, I highly recommend that you read Lancaster's book, attend a workshop, and buy a good shovel.

Tucson Examiner: Do More with Less

How can we live better in tough economic times? Try doing more with less. In my most recent Examiner article, I give suggestions for simpler lifestyles and ideas for creating useful items (like the yard light pictured here) from discarded items.

Tobacco Farming and Rain Water Harvesting

So you are asking yourself, "What the heck does tobacco farming have to do with rain water harvesting in the desert?" Those of you who are horiculturally astute may know that there are varieties of tobacco that grow wild in Arizona. The Native Americans have grown native strains of tobacco for centuries and use it in ceremonies.

Tobacco grows wild in the city of Tucson in yards and allies. You can find it particularly in older neighborhoods where many citizens have cultivated native plants and small patches of wildness. (Midtown and downtown can be contrasted with the dirt-colored suburban developments that are characterized by rocks, cement, and a few neatly manicured cacti. Meow.)

If you have seen tobacco growing in fields in Kentucky, you may not recognize the wild tobacco in Tucson. I can remember driving around Kentucky in the 1960s on vacation with the family. We passed miles and miles of tobacco fields. These plants were relatively short (3 feet) and had huge leaves. The tobacco plants growing around Tucson are much taller (up to 10 feet or more) and have hand-sized leaves and pretty yellow flowers.

A friend of mine planted wild tobacco in her university-area desert garden. These plants are at least 8-10 feet tall and offer a nice blind and shade her outdoor picnic area. One day while enjoying breakfast in her yard, I decided to become a tobacco farmer. On the west side of my yard, there is a 5 foot block wall that separates my yard from the two duplexes next door. Ever since I purchased this midtown property, I've been contemplating what beautiful, hardy, tall, fast-growing, drought-and-sun tolerant plant I could put there to screen my yard from the duplexes. Tobacco is that plant.

Lucky for my new seedlings, I also have the downspout from my roof on the west side of my house. If you read any of my rain water harvesting posts from last summer, you know that I planned to put in a rain water collection cistern. Well, that project hasn't happened yet. (Good news for the tobacco; bad news for me because that means I am still transporting rain water around the yard by hand.)

I have a rectangular garbage can that collects water from the downspout, but during a hard monsoon rain, it is filled in minutes. Last summer, the overflow created rivers and lakes in my backyard. (To see last year's photos click on water harvesting link on this blog). This spring, I created a trench from the rain water collection bin to the planting bed along the wall where the tobacco seeds will be planted. I have been waiting for the summer rain to plant my seeds. Thursday we had our first big rain of the summer season. It was glorious. Tomorrow, I'm planting my first tobacco crop.

Monsoon Update: Delightful Downpours

This has been a great summer for rain. We have had several days with steady, hard rain-- not the teasing 2-minutes sprinkles that we get some summers. Last Saturday, it rained so hard you couldn't see the buildings across the street. Yesterday, it rained so hard that water was pouring full force out of the scupper that empties my roof.

Much to my dismay, due to construction at my house, I have not installed a rainwater collection cistern yet. When I saw how much water was pouring off on my roof yesterday, I decided to set up a collection container. With my umbrella, I went out in the pouring rain and placed a large plastic bin in line with the scupper downpour. About 5 minutes later, I checked the progress-- to make sure the bin was placed correctly. To my surprise, the bin was full! I went out again, got a large plastic garbage can, and placed it under the scupper.

Unfortunately, when I tried to move the bin, I fell in the mud. I was so wet and muddy that I decided to stay out in the rain the dig some drainage ditches. My new patio is lower than the yard, and the water coming off the patio roof tends to collect near (or on the patio.) Also, water was forming lakes in the yard but not flowing toward the tree basins that I dug months ago for the grey water.

After about 45 minutes, I was a wet, muddy mess, but digging and slopping around in the mud and puddles was fun and exhilarating. It reminded me of playing in the puddles when I was a kid. After I got cleaned up and dried off, I looked outside my kitchen window. Several of the neighborhood children (and a few parents) were playing outside in the puddles. The desert is beautiful.

Here's Ding watching the newly created rivers flow through the backyard to the pomegranate tree.

By morning the bin, the garbage can, and several other containers in the yard were full of water. It was so exciting that I spent my morning exercise hour watering and planting seeds and cuttings. I'm looking forward to having a cistern and gutters installed.

Water Harvesting

Rain water harvesting, grey water use, sustainability, and living "off the grid" are hot topics out here is the Southwest. Since I love gardening but feel guilty about using ground water to water plants, I am very interested in using the grey water and rain water to turn my wasteland of a yard into an oasis.

In February, I had the good fortune to attend a rain water harvesting workshop, sponsored by the Stone Curves Co-Housing Neighborhood. The Stone Curves folks acquired a grant to fund a series of hands-on cistern building workshops. For a nominal fee, about 12 of us spent 2 Saturdays building 2 cisterns and learning about rain water harvesting and gardening techniques.

The first day focused on construction of 2 cisterns and installation of related plumbing. The second day focused on digging catchment basisns and landscaping.

Kevin Koch, owner of Technicians for Sustainability, conducted the construction class. (Kevin is wearing the large straw hat in the two photos above.)

Brad Lancaster, local sustainability celeb and author, taught the groundworks workshop (above). His book, Rain Water Harvesting for Day Lands, is a marvelous resource for anyone interested in this topic. Check out Brad's and Kevin's websites if you want to learn more about cisterns and groundworks landscaping techniques.

Ironically, only a few days after the rain water harvesting workshop, I spent a few days at the Phoenician in Phoenix on business. The neon green grass, heated pools, fake streams, golf courses, and fountains of the Phoenician are obscene. Surrounded by acres of wasted water and energy, it was extremely difficult to enjoy my stay. In the morning, it was a nippy 45 degrees F, but the Phoenician's 6 swimming pools were heated to the temperature of bath water. Immediately below is a picture of the terraced gardens at Stone Curves. Contrast that with a shot of the Phoenician at the bottom. When will Phoenicians realize that they live in the desert--not the tropics?