Larry, Do you mind telling us what county you live in?

We're on a well and it goes dry in the summer so we really have to conserve in the dry months.

We don't water the garden but mulch and hope the plants develop deep enough roots to fend for themselves. Our graywater all drains down the hill towards the sheep area to keep some greenery growing for their feed. We wear the heck out of our clothes rather than just washing because we wore them once. Showers & baths are not extravagant at all, sometimes just making do with spongebaths. Dishes are done by hand with a close eye on rinsing water usage. We have a sawdust toilet so no water wasted on flushing.

We really don't use much water at all during the dry months and you can bet we get downright giddy once the rain starts back up in the fall.

Diane

Soonergrandmom,

I live in South Sebastian County, Arkansas, about 8 miles from the Oklahoma line. We have a better water system than many in this area. Water now cost about $28.00 for 2400 gal., which is the bill I recieved today or yesterday ( I think a higher rate will start soon). The rate is set up at 18.00 for the service, including 1000 gal of water. For additional water it cost $5.50 per 1000 gal. I think the next 4000 gal. cost approx. $5.25 per 1000 gal.

Daine,

I dont think I have ever heard of a sawdust toilet. Is this something you can compost? When I was a kid we had an outdoor toilet that we used lime on.

Well I am going to hit the sack, this heat has had me messed up with headaches and chest pains and been taking too much medication, I will hope for a better day tommorrow.

Larry, for what it's worth, we're fighting the water conservation issue as well. Seems like there is never enough water to go around for the needs.

We are building a lasagna garden and doing a WHOLE lot of mulching, plus installing a do it yourself drip irrigation system. The lasagna garden, even in it's infancy, so far is really helping to conserve water. I've been fairly able to keep this large garden watered from my well, without having to supplement very much with "bought" water.

My dad built a homemade cistern on his place, with a charcoal filtering system. I don't know how many folks would be inclined to put so much elbow grease into building one, but there was an article on Mother Earth News on the link I'm going to post that said a 1,100 gal one was built with field stone, and mortar for around $100. I guess if you hired a backhoe to do the digging and did the rest of the work yourself a person could eventually save a lot of money on the water bill. Here were we live, it would be cheaper to just have another 50 ft well drilled at $8.00 per ft.

I hope you can figure something out to be more self sufficient, water wise, without having to pay consistently higher utilities because everything seems to just be getting more expensive all the time. The government is even beginning to place restrictions on the rainwater we manage to catch.

My son toyed with the thought of extending a drain from guttering on out to the garden, but of course that would only work when it rains. In Europe, and probably other places as well, they use gray water for the gardens. That might tend to throw the soil composition out of sync because of the chemicals in the water however.

I'm sure other posters here on the Okie web will come up with some ideas to help you along. Meanwhile, we all need to be doing the rain dance boogie.

Barbara

Here is a link that might be useful: Cisterns, water harvesting

Oops Larry,
You posted this while I was working on a response! I didn't realize you were having some health problems. Doing heavy work when you're not feeling well or having health problems is really out of the question.
I truly hope you find a simple way of coping with your water conservation issue, and I sincerely hope you get to feeling better. This heat is enough to get anyone down. Stay cool and inside as much as possible and remember to keep your electrolytes in balance. We've been guzzling lots of Gatorade and other fluids to cope.

Be well...
Barbara

When I lived in the country, about 11 years ago, I would divert the washing machine water on the rinse cycle. I just put a flexible hose on it, and let it run out the door, on the lawn. If I heard the machine draining, I would run out, and fill all sorts of buckets and watering cans. This water was used to water my garden, and trees.

I never used the water from the machine if I used bleach, but the soapy water was allowed on the lawn.

No, I didn't ask if any of that was "ok" with any agency or anyone. It was my property, and I figured I could do this. Besides, we were tight money wise, and the yard and garden would not have been getting any moisture otherwise.

I could see myself doing this again here. My washing machine is near a back door, and it would be easy to use it's water for yard watering.

Thanks for the reminder.

Moni

Thanks for all the replies, my mind is churning "what if's and how to's". I hope to hear more ideas. At this point a well sounds nice but there is no way we can justify the cost. The next best idea is to divert some, or all the gray water, I could divert the kitchen sink, dishwasher and washing machine pretty easy, the rest would be a nightmare.

Thanks again, Larry

Larry,

We do all we can to conserve water because summer rain is becoming increasingly rare most summers here in Love County and, even in "a good year", there's never enough of it and drought is common.

Catching rain in rain barrels, buckets, cisterns, stock tanks, ponds dug into the ground specifically for water retention, etc. is one way to catch and 'save' rainwater to use during drier periods of time. You can make your own rain barrels connected to one another using instructions found by googling. You can then use gravity feed and a water hose, a watering can, or even a small pump to move water, to transfer the water from the rain barrels to the parts of your yard or garden that need to be watered.

You can use graywater from your washing machine on ornamental plants although I'd be careful about using it on edible crops unless you're using green detergents. You also can capture water in the shower using a 5-gallon bucket although that involves hauling it outside and dumping it which can be time-consuming.

Improving your soil through the addition of compost, manure, etc. will greatly improve its ability to hold and use moisture. I don't have to water the well-amended clay in the veggie garden nearly as much now (after 10 years of improving it) as I had to the first few years we lived here when the soil was much less improved.

Heavy mulching reduces water use too by keeping the ground moist, keeping the ground cooler, and helping reduce the rate that water evaporates from your soil.

I know that you know watering with drip irrigation, PVC pipes with holes drilled in them, and soaker hoses also saves water as opposed to using sprinklers. You also can use the "Texas Pot" watering method, linked below. When I was a kid in Texas, everyone did this using either large clay pots that had one drainage hole in the center of the bottom of each pot, or the large institutional-sized vegetable cans that they got from the lunchroom ladies at the school. When you use the Texas Pot method, the water soaks into the ground at the root zone level and that helps encourage good, deep root growth and maximum benefit from the water poured into the pots. See the link below for an updated version of the Texas Pot Method using 1-gallon pots (I like to use larger ones!).

I don't plant ornamentals that cannot handle our heat and drought (and deer), so I mostly plant native plants or very well-adapted ornamentals here. I don't plant anything considered a heavy user of water, unless it is a water plant I'm planting in a pond. I do not water our ornamentals very much at all....either they survive on what falls from the sky plus an occasional watering during extreme dry spells, or they die. I see people here in my county who water daily....and I just never would do that. (Those people must have very good water wells or very high water bills, because the people around us who have wells (we don't have one) say their wells are already dry or almost dry, and it is just June.

I try to plant in a permaculture way, creating guilds or communities of plants that can grow well together and benefit from one another. For example, in the shade of a large pecan tree, I have smaller fruit trees (on the tree's south side and right at the drip line) that still get enough sunlight to produce fruit, but whose water needs are lower because they get shade part of the day. I put sweet potatoes in between the fruit trees. As the vines run, they help shade the ground and keep it cool and keep it from drying out as quickly. The sweet potatoes get watered when the fruit trees and pecan tree are watered, and that's enough water for them. On the north side of the tree, which is heavier shade, I have plants for the wildlife.....native groundcovers, four o'clocks and daturas for the moths, roughleaved dogwoods for the berries for the wildlife, etc. I hardly water this area ever, and all these plants do fine. They serve as a living mulch and a living plant community under the pecan tree which means it needs water less often because the soil around it is heavily shaded.

I also group plants with similar water needs together. Although none of my plants are heavy water guzzlers, the ones that need the most water are planted together in one area so they can get the water they need without other stuff that needs less watering being overwatered at the same time.

We don't fertilize anything with synthetic fertilizers. I see no point in heavily fertilizing and watering a lawn to make it grow, and then having to mow it once or twice a week because it is growing so quickly. Our lawn gets fed via the grass clippings that are cut with the mulching mower and allowed to fall to the ground and decompose. I usually mow every other time with the mulching mower. In between, I use the grass catcher to catch the clippings to use as mulch in the veggie garden.

And, speaking of lawns, they need and use a lot more water than mulched mixed plantings of trees, shrubs, perennials and groundcovers. Over the years, we are slowly removing lawn area....a little bit every year.....and this year about 1000 square feet of it.....and replacing it with heavily mulched, mixed plantings of trees, shrubs, groundcovers, etc. We make an effort to choose native plants that will provide something (flowers, fruits, nuts, berries, etc.) for the wildlife or for us.

We've never had water rationing here in our part of Love County. We have Thackerville water, and that's probably why we haven't had rationing because the folks north of us in and north of Marietta who have the Southern Oklahoma Water Corp. system seem to have water restrictions almost every summer. I think that our water company is VERY strict about allowing new customers to buy into the co-op because they just won't put more people on the system than it can handle at the worst of times, and that's a good thing.

Of course, we do all the standard water-conservation things you can do in a house....low-flow toilets and shower heads, etc., and we have a high-efficiency washing machine that uses, I think, only 1/3 the amount of water used by regular washing machines.

We also have a regular program of cedar tree removal. Since cedar trees are huge water guzzlers, we remove more and more of them every year. With almost 15 acres of land, we have a long way to go, but we've just about removed all the cedar trees from the 4 acres closest to the house. Since cedar trees not only guzzle water but also burn like mad and are a huge fire hazard, we won't stop until we've removed all we can. Some of them are huge....probably 60 to 80' tall, and I doubt we'll ever get rid of those, but those really large ones are about 1000' from the house and landscape, so we just don't worry about them much.

We also plant desirable trees. Tree roots help soil hold moisture so pastures with an occasional desirable tree will hold moisture better over time than empty pastures with no trees. I think one of our friends learned this the hard way when he had several hundred trees removed from his property in order to create better pasture for his cattle. His property has had trouble ever since with erosion during heavy rains because there's not enough tree roots to help the water filter down into the soil, so it runs off and takes the soil with us, and transports the soil to our creek. (After a storm, my husband jokingly asks him if he wants to come retrieve his good sandy loam from our creek.)

One of my big concerns is the legal battle certain communitities in and around the Dallas-Fort Worth area are fighting to force Oklahoma to sell them water. I am afraid that if the start selling southern Oklahoma's "excess" water to Texas, our water table will drop even lower and that would be a problem since many wells here already run dry every summer or almost every summer as it is.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Texas Pot Method for Watering Tomatoes

I saw a posting once from seedmama that said she keeps a pitcher by her sink to catch the water that runs out while she is waiting for the hot water to get to the sink. I thought that was a good idea. At my house that would be several gallons a day so I could water the house plants and a few flowers.

I don't give much thought to water conservation where I live because we always seem to have plenty of water. We have city water and it is resonable. When I plant in the garden, I get sufficient rainfall most of the time and most years don't have to supplement too much. This year I only planted in containers, and of course I do have to water those, but it doesn't take a lot since the water is going directly into a smaller amount of soil mix.

In another location where it was dry all of the time, I drained my washer onto the lawn. I got dual benefit from this because that was a lot of water that didn't go into my septic tank. Behind my washer, I had two drain pipes. One pipe went to the septic tank and the other went outside on the grass. The washer hose had a curved pipe on the end which I could just lift out of the drain pipe and put into the other one anytime I wanted to change them.

Our water level is very high here and at sometime in the past everyone had a well. Mine is capped off and under a building, but my neighbor has one that sticks up a few inches above ground. If you remove the cover, you can see the water. It looks like it is maybe, 10 feet down, but no one uses their wells because we all have to have a septic system....and we are all a little too close. Our biggest problem is getting the rain water to drain away from our property. We should be getting a culvert in the next few days which we hope will help with that.

A couple of years ago some school children had to write an essay on ways to help Oklahoma. One said that we should have a big pipe from NE Oklahoma to southern Oklahoma so we could send them water. What a great idea for a child to have. LOL

I have been amazed that I didn't have to water my containers a lot during this extreme heat. I guess the humidity made the difference. I expected to water several times each day, and instead there were days that they didn't need water at all. I watered last night although I could still feel damp soil in the containers but I knew I wouldn't have time to do it this morning. They actually got watered twice because we got a little shower during the night. I don't think we got much but things were damp when I went out this morning.

I feel very bad for those of you that need to ration water, and I know that is the case in much of the US now. Can you imagine what it was like for the pioneers to grow crops in Oklahoma. Don't you know they hand carried a lot of little jugs of water to give those plants a drink. I couldn't grow enough to feed my family all year even with the advantages we have now. Gardening is really a gamble, isn't it?

I would say that we could all pray for rain, but the last time we did that for Dawn and she got flooded.

I know most of you have probably been eating tomatoes for weeks, but not me. I got mine in very late so I am just reaching that stage. I got two little Sungold's today, but the larger tomato plants look good. I don't have blushing yet, but most of the earlier fruit set is taking on that whitish color just before blushing occurs. Maybe next week I will get that BLT. Old time gardeners here tell me they shoot for the first ripe fruits on the 4th of July. I will be close. Most years I am much earlier.

I also use the pitcher by the sink for catching water while it gets hot, and a bucket in the shower for the same reason. Mostly I use that water on trees outside, cause I really don't have many indoor plants. But on rainy days I use it to flush the toilet. :)

I hate waste, and letting it run down the drain would be waste.

Moni

Dawn,

Thanks for all the info, as before, I will save this page also.

Soonergrandmom,

Thank you also. The dual washer discharge lines is so simple, and easy. I am embarrassed that I never thought of that.

Larry

"I dont think I have ever heard of a sawdust toilet. Is this something you can compost?"

Larry, yes, it's what you might call a low-tech compost toilet. LOL It sounds kind of gross when you first hear it but, done properly, it's not. We compost the waste (and it does so VERY quickly -- usually gone without a trace within 24 hours) safely, in an area we made just for it to ensure absolutely no run-off anywhere and we have no close neighbors, etc. We do not use the compost on our garden although some do. We just leave it to feed the forest and plants that surround it.

We'd have never thought of a sawdust toilet but 1) we had no running water the first few years we lived here, and 2) they said we couldn't pass a perc test to put in a septic. Now we're used to it and love the water conservation it brings.

More than you folks ever wanted to know about our family's waste. LOL

Diane

Well, we live in town, although it's not a very large one, so I imagine Code Enforcement would be on me if I tried having a sawdust toilet.

But I'm doing all I can to conserve. It's been very hot and dry here. Even though I haven't posted much lately, I do get on for a little while every couple of days to read and find out what the rest of you are doing. I'm so glad you all take time out of what are probably very busy days to post and I'm sorry I haven't been very good at it.

In the house, we conserve several ways. I do run my dishwasher but there are always those pots and pans that don't fit, and I won't put certain other things in the dishwasher. So I'm doing a sink-full of dishes probably every day. I put soap and water in the largest of whatever is dirty and wash everything in it, kind of rinsing things over it until it gets full. I keep rinsed-out milk jugs at the sink for pouring extra sink water into, and that's where the water goes from that largest thing when I've washed it clean. I find I accumulate several gallons a day just cleaning up in the kitchen.

We have a small pump, and we use that to pump bathwater, either into milk jugs (I saved them all winter), or sprayed directly on flowers and shrubs with a hose connected to the pump. DH and I, whichever takes a bath first, "save" our bathwater for whoever takes it last that day. DGS, though, tends to fill his tub too full in spite of my best efforts to remind him, "It's a BATHTUB, not a SWIMMING POOL". If you use bathwater to water things with, please only put it on flowers and shrubs, not on vegetables and herbs, as there's danger of e.Coli if you do.

On days when I have enough wash for a load, we pump our bathwater into the washer and use it for the wash load, adding detergent, of course. This goes down the drain simply because we don't have a good way to do otherwise, and the washer uses new water for the rinse. DH and I do tend to wear our jeans two or three days instead of one. But our shirts and skivvies would be too stinky to put into service for a second day.

With our toilet, we follow the motto that California is known for, adapted as such: "Welcome to Oklahoma, baked by the sun, Where we don't flush for Number One". Of course, at the end of the day I go around and make sure everything's flushed because I don't like it all sitting like that at night. I kinda don't like it much during the day, but it's just the three of us and two bathrooms so it doesn't get too bad.

When we get rain, I collect the rainwater that pours off the roof into two sprayer tanks that I bought at Atwood's on sale. The first one that I got was mushroom shaped, capacity 210 gallons, and I really thought it didn't hold enough because a good hard rain would overflow it. Plus it's shape did not fit very well with where we placed it. So next Atwood's sale, we got another, this one shaped like a big barrel on it's side, capacity 300 gallons. It fits better where we had the mushroom shaped one, and we moved the mushroom one to the other side of the house. A good rain will fill them both up and then some. Both tanks have a 8" diameter round hole in the top that the drain pipe is dropped down into when rain is forecast. When the tank is full, we reconnect the drain pipe as for normal drainage and put the screw-lid on the hole to keep mosquitos from breeding and cats and small critters from falling in. When I'm ready to water, we lower our little pump in and connect it to the hose and water away. It seems to take about 100 gallons to water my garden each time. We completely emptied both tanks early last week and I've had to water with City water twice. Our water is pretty expensive because whatever we use also increases our sewage bill. We got a little rain yesterday morning and that gave us only about 5" of water in each tank. But it's better than nothing! I'm grateful for whatever, and also for the break in the heat. I was beginning to worry that I was going to lose my garden. I did lose my Nanking Cherry bushes, both of them. When I replace them, I guess I'll plant them where they will get partial shade, rather than full sun.

I have been getting cardboard every chance I get. For some reason I'm unable to get it from my neighborhood furniture store any more, but I've found another furniture store that gets deliveries every day. DH goes right by there on the way home from his work-out at the hospital fitness center, so he's started stopping in and getting some on his way home. I really like the cardboard from recliners. It's heavy and just the right size to fit between my raised beds. Since it's in such big pieces, it doesn't blow around as much or have to be weighted down as much as the smaller pieces did.

I got some old hay from a little old lady friend of mine who had it in her loafing shed and hasn't kept cattle for the last ten years, so it's that old. But it's good for mulch. I've also used up every single bag of leaves that I collected last fall. Some of you will remember probably that I went around my neighborhood looking for bags of leaves being left on the curb. I tried to go to the door and ask if I could have them, but most of the time no one was home, in which case I just threw them in the back of my pick-up, drove them to my back yard and threw the bags under my big back porch.

We got really lucky and found a hardly used Troy Bilt chipper/shredder at a garage sale last weekend, for half what they sell for at Lowe's. We started it up and it only took one yank to get it going. It's overkill for leaves, I know, but it'll be nice for all those hollyhock and sunflower stalks and for next time we trim the privet hedge.

I find that my raised beds are not such a good thing when the weather is dry, as they drain TOO well. But I am mulching heavily and hoping for the best. And I do agree with Dawn that it's wise to plant things that will take the heat and the dry. I have found that sunflowers, zinnias and hollyhocks will grow well in my conditions without much care at all.

Sorry this is so long! --Ilene

Ilene,

Just wanted to say Hi and tell you I've missed seeing you on here this spring.

Y'all do a lot of water conservation and I think that's great!

I agree that raised beds tend to dry out too quickly, although mulching helps. I wish my beds could be raised for the spring rainy season and then lowered into the ground like pit garden beds or waffle beds in the summer!

Hope y'all are doing well and that your DH's recovery from his surgeries has been a good one, and that DD is doing equally well.

I wish I had your water tanks. What I REALLY want is a very large above-ground pool (one that holds thousands of gallons)right beside the garage/barn to catch all that runoff. Then, I could pump it out of the pool and use it for my garden areas. One of these days I'm going to have one. Space obviously isn't an issue since we have acreage, and we could keep a pool cover on it to keep the wild critters out and just run rain gutters/down spouts to it from the roof.

Dawn

Dawn, good to hear from you! DH is now one year out from total knee replacement on his first knee. The second one was done in August, so that's coming up. He did his exercises religeously and he's Dr. Plaster's best patient, doing just great! We chose Dr. Plaster, a Tulsa orthopedic surgeon, after much research. So many of our friends and acquaintances contracted staph after having knee surgery. We noticed none of Dr. Plaster's patients did. He is wonderful and so is that orthopedic hospital where he had his surgery done.

DD has now lost 70 pounds. She was about 200 pounds overweight so she has a way to go, but she is looking more like herself and says she feels better every day. Gastric bypass is not for weenies, that's for sure. Her employer, a large television dish service provider, fired her right before she was due to have her surgery. She kept her insurance through Cobra, though it was horribly expensive, quickly found another job and told them up front about the surgery and they seemed to be ok with it, but while she was recuperating they hired someone else and told her after she got back to work that she 'wasn't working out'. So she moved here from Tulsa and got a job in Bartlesville. She's living in our rental across the street from us.

DGS graduated last May. He has not yet been able to find a job, but he has some money still saved from last summer so we're hoping at least maybe he can find something when all these college kids quit their jobs to go off to school. Tried to get him in tech school and I was surprised at how selective our local tech school has gotten. He didn't make the cut.

DS got mad at one of his supervisors at his job that he has held for 14 years and QUIT! He finally found another job and says he likes it, but the pay is half what he was making. He won't have the commute, which makes up some of the difference, but not all. So at the age of 40, he is starting all over again. Oh, well, what can you do.

My garden is looking pretty good, considering all. I grew cabbages this year, Copenhagen Market and Mammoth Red Rock. Have a few cukes coming on and have had a few beans. We didn't have spring this year so that's affected the bean production. I've yet to have had my first ripe tomato, unless you count one or two brown berry cherries, although there are lots of green ones out there. I sure hope we don't see that Early Blight thing.

That'd be cool to have raised beds that rise and lower, like TV's do in those cabinets! LOL! I want my raised beds to do that!

Sounds like the swimming pool idea could work. If your cover isn't tight enough you might need mosquito dunks unless you plan to keep the water circulating all the time. Somewhere on here we talked about goldfish, but you'd have to fish them out every time you pumped water out so I don't think that'll work. Keeping the lids on my tanks seems to do the trick.

I forgot to mention I'm mulching my flower beds with wood chips we get from a tree trimmer service. They won't deliver, they take it to their storage yard and dump it and then we have to go there with our shovels and buckets. The largest tree trimmer service in our area, the one that does all the work for the electric company, won't dump any off OR let us come get any. And we can't get any from the City, either. I don't know what the deal is. But I'm grateful to have a source. It looks real nice in the flower beds.

Thanks for your encouragement and advice, it's always so good to come on here and get help or share ideas. --Ilene

Ilene,

I am so glad your DH is doing so well and, you know, I've only known 2 people who've had knee replacement surgery....and one had a very bad staph infection, almost died and almost lost his leg, and the second one (he had both knees replaced) did fine. I did't know staph infections were so common with that type of surgery.

I am glad DD is hanging in there and losing the weight. She's making great progress and I hope she sticks with her. The surgery was such a drastic step---but look at how well it is paying off.

It sounds like it has been one thing after another with your family this year. I am sure things will work out, one way or another, for your DGS. At least y'all got him through high school! Hooray!

We didn't have spring either, but we had 12" of rain in one day and 18 or 19" total in a five week period, so had lots of issues with soil that was too wet. So, when everything finally dried out, it was "summer" already. Grrr! I hope we get to have a real spring next year.

At least you've had some great cabbage weather this spring. I thought last spring was pretty rough with the late freezes followed by the early heat wave + high winds in May, but this year was worse with the flooding rains.

I always joke that the four seasons here in Love County are Drought, Flood, Drought and Drought, but it is just about that bad any more.

Dawn

LOL Dawn, I guess our four seasons here would be Flood, Flood, Drought and Freeze. I notice SOME lucky folks in Okla are getting rain, but it has bypassed us for the most part.

My cabbages have sunscald, I will probably have to harvest those that are the worst, and I'm not ready to do so yet. They've been chewed on a little and I've found a few slugs in some of the ones that I cut because they weren't doing very well. I bought one of Ruth Stout's books and she recommends sprinkling salt on the cabbages after a rain. I think that might be OK for during cool weather, but I've been afraid to try it in this heat. This year if I saw the little moth that lays the eggs, I ran out there with a fly swatter and flung it around till I knocked her out of the air. Our neighbor watched one episode and I thought he'd just die laughing. I'm struggling to keep the beans and cukes alive, so maybe we can have a fall harvest, as we sure haven't gotten much yet! I've got a few cukes on the vine and planned to make a jar of pickles or two today, but the way things are going I think I might be better off leaving a couple on the vine to mature so I'll have, at least, seed for next year. These cukes are looking wonderful, nice and straight, perfect for dill spears, which is what I had planned to make out of them.

The garden gets a little bit better every year, and I have resigned myself to the fact that I will have failures every year from not being able to plan for the weather.

we bought 6 acres and we moved our rv out there and we are getting ready to start building our house. We are planning on it going slow and try to pay as much as we can as we go. It wont be completely paid for but pretty dang close. Living out in the camper with low flow faucets and led lights already built in we are learning about how little we really need on a day to day basis. Its been an experience and just by living in there we have already made adjustments in the design of our house to incorporate water conservation. You know one cool thing i saw on tv was a water cooler tank that had coils inside of it with a small fan that blew on them creating condensation that dripped into a 5 gallon plastic water jug that purified the water for drinking. Pretty much making water from air.... and lets face it here in OK our humidity is high enough it would work, or any variation of this simple idea. But as it stands we use low flow faucets/shower heads and toilet, divert all of our gray tank outside to water the bushes near by (as soon as we switch to eco friendly soap it will be routed to the veggie garden), and i set out a bucket below a constant drip we get from the air unit that i use to water all my flowers in pots every evening. DH and I are trying to come up with some good ideas on a drip irrigation for the veggie garden. Our problem is that anything we do is going to cost alot of money due to the gardens size (150 X 100)so we water early morning till we get it figured out.

luck to all....
Danni Girl

OK - I will try to do better at conserving water, but if I have to share bath water with my husband, it will be same water, same shower, same time. Might as well get some benefit from all of this. LOL

Ilene,

We hardly get the Freeze season here. There's been a couple of bad ice storms that have done pretty bad tree damage maybe 5 miles north of us, but they haven't reached our end of Love County. We have had ice, but not damaging ice.

I can just see you out there swatting those moths--and it has put a grin on my face. I'm glad my neighbors are too far away to see much of my similar behavior.

Danni Girl,

What an adventure y'all are going to have. You'll have to keep us posted on your progress as you go along.

The old irrigation ditch method could work for you depending on your soil. And, when you're ready to spend the money for drip irrigation, if you use Dripworks, which you can find by googling, they have a free design service that will help you plan a layout based on your specific needs.

Carol,

LOL. Wasn't that one way they promoted saving energy back in the 1970s oil crisis....didn't they promote "showering with a friend"?

Dawn

For anyone looking for some water storage tanks, I noticed a few different tanks on CL today. I will link the ad that seemed to have several....not too expensive, at $75 each.

Here is a link that might be useful: CL listing