Designing Water Systems For Flood Irrigation in Organic Gardening

Do this to water your garden with valuable resources to grow more giant vegetables! The slowing and spreading of water is a permaculture principle that reduces inputs. Here's how contour trenches in our growing area save us time and resources.

A fish system upslope can supply nutrients for your garden. When you drain fish basins, that water can feed your garden. A simple demonstration of water and garden working together.

Remember, contour paths are level, so water flows evenly from end to end. This distributes nutrients across a longer growing space so they can be absorbed into raised beds. Can you see how this saves you a lot of time hauling around a watering can?

With nutrients uphill from your growing space, the contour walking paths become a distribution system. You can go further to mulch these paths to reduce evaporation and add carbon to your growing area.

Done right, you can even have the footpaths working in your garden to distribute moisture, nutrients, grow mushrooms, and make your growing areas more enjoyable. I like to use wood chips; here's an extensive list of what wood chips in your paths can do for you, visit https://www.prosperityhomestead.org/even-foot-paths-work/

Then again, you don't need woodchips because shallow on-contour trenches do a lot of work on their own. Even chop and drop of the cover crop left in walking paths have value. Idle beds, contour paths, or end-of-season growing spaces can receive manure.

You don't need a more extensive garden or this. Yet this method scales to acres using flood irrigation if enough water is available. Because most water soaks into the ground around narrow contour ditches, there isn't much time for evaporation.

Who is this Scott guy? I'm volunteering at the Sustainable Homestead Institute, an agricultural and wildcrafting education center run by Scott Vernon. For details, visit http://www.sustainablehomestead.com/

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