If you have tank water, you can wash your car at home whenever you like. Of course, to save water you may prefer to use a commercial car wash or ensure you only use buckets of water and wash your car on the lawn.

Without your own tank water, you can use a bucket of water to clean windows, lights and mirrors, or spot clean any corrosive substances. Under stage 3a restrictions, for a full car wash, you must use a commercial car wash facility that uses less than 70 litres per car and recycles water.Note that if we move to stage 4 restrictions, even commercial car washes will have to use buckets for washing.

Posted: January 15th, 2008 under general, saving water.
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If you are setting up a veggie/herb garden and want some tough (as in can survive in little water) plants, try any of the following:

• bronze fennel (will grow wild if not monitored)
• cherry tomatoes
• artichokes
• garlic
• garlic chives
• lemon balm
• warrigal spinach
• Japanese parsley
• marjoram
• apple mint (less so if you use the variegated specis)
• rosemary
• cucumber
• eggplant
• zucchini
• pumpkin
• burdock
• perennial beans
• zebra beans
• spring onion
• established silver beet

If you choose a mix of these veggies and others than use more water, try separating your garden bed into two parts so you only need to water one part frequently.

Plants grown from seed will be much hardier than ones you have transplanted.

Posted: January 6th, 2008 under gardening, saving water.
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Overall, the water coming out of your laundry is perfectly usable on most of your garden or even for flushing toilets.

You can use this water by collecting it in buckets you then carry out to your garden, connecting a length of flexible pipe to the outlet and hand-watering your garden or by connecting pipes from the laundry to the garden permanently.

If you have the water piped form your laundry, remember to have a diverter added in as well. A diverter means you can control when the water goes onto your garden and when it goes into the sewer system.It is best to not use laundry water on your garden when:

•  It is raining heavily (there is no point overloading the soil and causing more runoff)
• The washing includes dirty nappies or other particularly dirty items
•  You have used bleach
• You are cleaning something greasy or toxic in the laundry trough

Posted: January 2nd, 2008 under general, saving water.
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With stage 3a water restrictions in place across Melbourne, you need to know when you can water your garden – unless you only use tank and grey water of course!

You can’t water your garden on Monday, Thursday or Friday.

If your house number is odd, you can water on Sunday or Wednesday.

If your house number is even or you don’t have a house number, you can water on Saturday or Tuesday.

Whatever day you can water on, you can only water by hose/bucket/watering can/manual watering system* between 6 am and 8 am, or by an automatic watering system between midnight and 2 am.

Note that if anyone over 70 years lives in your house, you may manually water between 6am and 8 am OR 8 am and 10 am on the specified days.

You can not water your lawn with tap water AT ALL. Recycled or tank water is allowed, of course.

For a full set of the water restrictions, please visit www.ourwater.vic.gov.au

* A drip watering system can be used only if it uses less than 9 litres per hours for each lineal metre of hose

Posted: December 30th, 2007 under gardening, general, saving water.
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You can often find piles of leaves under and around the base of your house, garage, shed and water tank.

Why not rake up these piles and put them around your plants? It is useful mulch to protect your plants and it also cleans up your yard – which also reduces the first risk, too.

The result is a very organic looking garden bed and a natural source of nurtients to the soil and plants later on.

Posted: December 28th, 2007 under gardening, saving water.
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There has been a huge amount of rain hitting Melbourne and southern Victoria over the last two days – what are you doing to collect any of it?

It may not have been possible to get a tank in when you saw the rains coming (which is a pity as it probably would have filled a number of times!) but that doesn’t mean you can’t make the most of that water…

• put out buckets, bowls, plastic tubs, etc and collect some rain to use in your garden next week or use to rinse clothes
• get out in the garden between showers (downpours!) and turn over your garden beds
• aerate your lawn to maximise how much water is soaking into teh roots (You can do this by poking holes in the lawn with a pitchfork, shovel, strong stick or whatever – it doesn’t have to be a fancy aerator to work)
• park outside so your car gets a natural clean
• put all pots out where they will catch some rain – protect them from eh harshest downpours
• prepare to mulch your garden in the coming days to keep the moisture in the soil
• continue to conserve water in the house, and remind others that rain now doesn’t mean restrictions have ended or that water is still not in limited supply

Posted: December 21st, 2007 under collecting water, general, nature's gift, saving water.
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It is possible to grow vegetables, even when you have to limit your water use – even if there is plenty of rain and water, the following tips can help conserve water which reduces your water bill and prevents us running out of water again after the rains.

• Choose your vegetables to grow in 3 layers – a ground cover (pumpkin, cucumber, strawberries, etc) in around medium crops (lettuce, eggplant, carrots, etc) underneath some tall plants (tomatoes, corn, etc). When you water the garden, water falling of each layer will water the roots for all 3 plants, the ground cover reduces weeds and evaporation and the taller plants will shelter the shorter ones from the sun and wind.
• shade young and vulnerable plants – hang some shade cloth, drape some gauze material over them, have some other plants in front of the garden
• add home-made compost to your garden between your crops to ensure the soil is nutrient rich and a good composition
• use liquid fertilizers rather than solid ones as this forms an addtional source of moisture as well as being utilised by plants more quickly
• keep the garden weed free so the plants aren’t competing for what water there is
• mulch the garden- organic sugar cane is great, as is the remains of your last vegetable crop and other garden prunings

Posted: December 19th, 2007 under gardening, saving water.
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It may not be the most glamorous job, but weeding your garden is important.

Any weeds growing near your plants will compete for whatever water is available so your plants get less water. Pull out the weeds, and your plants get more water. Simple!

Once your gardenis weeded, add more mulch and possibly plant a groundcover to reduce teh numner of weeds coming back.

Posted: December 18th, 2007 under gardening, saving water.
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Like for any burn, the first thing to do with sunburn is put it under running cold water to pull out the heat of the burn.

I hate to admit that our daughter got sunburnt last week – she was sunscreened but her top rode up as she rode her bike and foudn the spot we had missed. Instead ofputting her in a cold shower, we stood her in the middle of a garden bed and hosed her back It helped her sunburn and watered some plants – so although we technically watered the garden out of restriction times, it was better than putting her in the shower.

Posted: December 7th, 2007 under gardening, general, saving water.
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Years ago, everyone had a Hills Hoist in their backyard – usually somewhere in the middle of the yard over the lawn.

Now days, people have clothes lines of all sorts of sizes and styles, including many that are removed or folded away when not in use. But where is your line?

A clothes line over a paved area is easier to work from – no soggy grass to sink into as you hang washing – but it doesn’t make much use of any drips or humidity (the moisture in the air from water evaporating from your wet clothes). Whereas hanging clothes over a lawn or garden can create a little extra moisture for the soil and plants underneath.

Especially if you reduce the spin cycle time on your washing machine to use less power and let clothes drip a bit on the garden.

If moving the clothes line is a bit much to conserve a little water, you can hang clothes on a clothes horse and move it around different parts of the garden to help water them.

Posted: December 6th, 2007 under general, saving water.
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