SLCC Magazine Summer 2024

Emily Hansen, coordinator for SLCC’s Community Gardens, offers the following tips to reduce water waste:

• Use drip irrigation to deliver water to the root zones and reduce evaporation.

• Irrigate plants in the cool hours of the night or early morning.

• Mulch around your plants to reduce moisture loss from soil.

• Know your soil texture. Clay and loam soils hold more water and require less frequent irrigation, while water drains faster from sandy soils, requiring more frequent irrigation.

• Improve your soil texture and overall soil health by adding organic material, such as compost, to improve water holding capacity.

• Avoid bare soil. Plant in clusters rather than rows and don’t over-prune leaves that shade the soil. More densely planted gardens maintain a cooler and more humid microclimate. As long as plants aren’t competing for light or nutrients, planting closer together is best to conserve soil moisture.

• Use shade cloth over your garden beds during the hottest days. Even plants that require full sun can benefit from a shade cloth in hot Utah summers.

• Reduce water runoff. Form the soil into trough-like structures around the base of plants to keep water from flowing away from the root zone. Watering for shorter periods of time also helps water to be more readily absorbed by the soil.

• Adjust irrigation for the plant’s needs. Your irrigation needs will look different for your vegetable garden versus your lawn versus your trees and shrubs.

• Be intentional about your landscape choices outside of your vegetable garden. There are a lot of drought-tolerant ornamental plants, shrubs, and trees that do very well in Utah’s dry climate.

Learn more about SLCC Community Gardens at: slcc.edu/ThayneCenter/community-engagement/community-gardens