Canmore Community Gardening Society
Growing Food! Building Community! Gardening Together!
Water is the first consideration in any garden, landscape or ecosystem. In our garden, our water access is limited and in an effort to be as resource-efficient as possible, we must be wise and mindful of our water use.
Water is stored in our garden in the cistern next to the garden entrance, and also in the reservoirs in the bottom of the wicking beds. Each reservoir holds approximately 1/3 of the volume of the cistern, and should not need filling more often than once a week.
For now, the hose will run from the hospital to fill our cistern and wicking beds on
Tuesday, Friday and Sunday evenings.
We will re-assess this schedule around mid-July to determine if it is meeting our needs. Feedback is welcome!
Please do not draw from the cistern to fill the wicking beds, wicking beds should be filled only when the hose is running at the above times.
The cistern water should be used for the communal beds and for top watering the wicking beds when necessary.
Please take the following into consideration when watering your garden bed:
1) Mulch! water evaporates from exposed soil, and a layer of straw, or other mulch will do wonders to retain the moisture in your garden!
2) Cover Crop! again, keeping the soil covered goes a long way to keeping moisture in your bed. Planting a nitrogen-fixing species, greens or other cover crop in between all your larger plants will help limit evaporation.
3) Soil should not be wet, just a little moist is good. Often if the soil appears dry on the top, it remains moist just below the surface. You can check by poking your finger in a little ways.
4) top watering encourages the roots of our plants to remain near the surface of the soil, whereas allowing water to wick up from the bottom encourages deep root growth thus strengthening our plants
5)please help us monitor the efficacy of the wicking beds by recording your observations in the water section of the Garden Log (Glog)… last section, little green book in the green tool box.
Happy Gardening!