Water Thrifty Modified Navajo Grid Watering System
Sustainable gardening requires that all resources be used wisely. One of the most precious resources for gardening is water. In some areas, water is at a premium. Where it is available, it can be quite costly. Although in some situations, water is abundant and cheap, in many cases it is scarce and a large expense.
There are many ways to water gardens with a minimum of water, such as soaker hoses and drip irrigation schemes. These work well and are not very expensive. But they do require an outlay of capital and maintenance time. There is a way of hand watering that requires only a large watering can and a source of water.
This method is called grid, or waffle gardening. It was practiced by the Anazazi and later the Zuni inhabitants of the arid southwest. This method works well where summers are mainly dry. In areas with abundant summer rains, a raised bed system makes more sense.
This system consists of shallow sunken areas arranged in a grid pattern. Between the sunken areas are ridges of soil that keep the water in the sunken area. The overall look is that of a waffle, where the sunken areas are like the little pockets of a waffle that hold the butter and syrup. Plants are planted in the middle of the sunken areas and watered by simply pouring a couple inches of water into the middle of the sunken areas. The raised berms of earth surrounding the sunken areas hold the water close to the plants and allow it to soak in . Otherwise the water would just run all over.
This keeps the amount of water needed to a minimum. Only the soil close to the plants needs to be damp to support the plants.
Here at Winter Lake Research Center, watering is done by hand with well water. The well is a hand dug shallow well so water is pumped by hand. To completely soak the entire gardening ground would take an enormous amount of water if pumped by hand.
To minimize the amount of water needed, experiments were carried out to determine if a modified waffle system could be used. Plants were simply planted in different sized round depressions and watered by hand. The depressions were filled with a watering can once a day.
By trial and error, it was determined that the depressions needed to be a minimum of two inches deep and eighteen inches in diameter. Any smaller and the plants suffered from water deprivation.
This system has worked well now for three years. Since Winterlake gets little or no rain in the summer months, watering is critical. The garden plants show no signs of water stress and produce well.
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