99 Bottles In The Ground

One buried milk bottle under the borage, and practically
on top of a dwarf manuka plant.

Behind it is an alpine strawberry and the curled parsley.
Behind that you can just see the chives around the Blush Babe apple.

The bottom right corner is a
wool mulching blanket from Country Trading.co
around the columnar Ballerina Polka. The rest of the mulch is
 pea strawand needles from the Norfolk Pine.

I've been looking for a better way to water everything that didn't involve lots of money or digging up my entire garden (because summer is coming, and I have twice as many plants now!).

The best quick DIY method I've found is just burying a bottle with a few tiny holes or slits in. This both acts as a slow distribution water storage tank that won't evaporate and delivers the water deeper under the ground directly to the roots.

I haven't needed to actually test them yet, because it's still winter and rainy, but I've started adding them to bare ground, or when I plant stuff.


Problems:

- finding enough bottles! We generate very little recycling which is really holding up my plans for a recycled garden empire (I've been trying to do a bottle tower for ages and never have enough bottles! Also see: the incremental rate of mulching for new beds... I'm almost ready to go raid recycling piles on recycling day).

- burying the bottles. They have to be quite deep, so it's tricky to add them around existing plants. The best time to add them is when planting something new.

- difficult to judge the right bottle size or slit size (it always comes out much faster than expected!). I've got some much smaller ones in the containers and the bigger 2 litre bottles in the garden.

Considerations

- may be worth adding a filter over the opening to stop things falling in

- may need to add sand or something similar to slow the rate of water seepage

- could be an interesting way to disperse fertiliser directly to the plant roots (e.g. something that will dissolve like Blood and Bone or compost teas)

- they look a bit ugly, but should be covered up by plants over time if you put them in the right place.

- you probably need at least one per large plant or tree, so that can add up to a lot of buried bottles.

- can just not bury them and have them slowly drip down from the surface but I like the idea of getting the water in as deeply as possible.




More info
http://www.providentliving.org.nz/bottle-drip-irrigation/
http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-garden/2009/06/pop-bottle-drip-irrigation/
http://gardenandhome.co.za/article_t2.aspx?id=50568