The No Plumbing Underground Watering System

By M.R. Rowley

     Everything in life is an accumulation of events and experiences that eventually inspire us to do something extraordinary. This treatise is one of them.

Back in 1988, I was inspired by a PBS program titled "Seeds of Change", to start dedicating my life to organic gardening and later to organic market farming. I did do a study about hydroponic gardening and visited a hydroponic lettuce operation in Orange, Virginia. Although I was impressed by the seemingly endless supply of harvesting and the computer controlled systems, the more I studied it the less contented I had become about using this as a model of future farming. It was not long when I threw away all the books I had on hydroponics. Intuitively I knew that organic was the way to go. I was also inspired by Mel Bartholomew's square foot gardening method and used it for my first garden. I mixed my own soil using peat moss, vermiculite and Jersey Green Sand.

The second year I added a soaker hose in an attempt to a self-watering system. After that year I removed the hose because I could not really know how much watering was too much or too little.

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It was not until I moved to Virginia that I came up with the method that is the title of this booklet. I quickly set up one grow bed, which consisted of a frame, plastic liner, gravel, a weed block fabric and of course my soil mix. Make sure your ground is level.

On one end of the frame I separated a small section that would remain void so I would be able to see the water level, if any. I placed in the liner, about 1-1/2 inches of 3/4 inch gravel, placed the weed blocker on top of that, then the soil mix. Put your water in the void and it will go around all the gravel and percolate up through the weed blocker into the soil where the roots are. This system is particularly useful in arid areas because no water will be wasted. While I was living in New-Mexico I only needed to water the beds twice, maybe three times a week.

I recently made an improvement on the watering part. Instead of having the void on the end, I placed a 6 inch PVC with 3/8 inch holes drilled 1/2 inch from the bottom all the way around it and placed it into the gravel in the center of the bed. If you live in a very wet area, you might want to use a five-gallon bucket instead, so you could take out the excess water that will accumulate after a heavy rain.

If you want to get sophisticated, you could use a mechanical float switch to automatically do the watering. These are very inexpensive and can be purchased from anywhere that sells evaporative coolers. Mechanical float switches are very simple. Use 1/4 inch copper or plastic hose, turn the water on and adjust it for the depth of your water. And if you want a completely automatic system, you could also install an inexpensive evaporative cooler pump with a different type of float switch to remove the excess water.