Water Bottle Irrigation System

Let's start with saving you money, we all like that right! Well instead of going out and spending lots of money on an irrigation system, you should look around at what you already have and don't use anymore. I had a bucket full of water bottles sitting around waiting to be thrown away. Instead of throwing them away I decided to reuse them because I have already paid for them. These bottles are made of plastic so they will last forever, at my house or the dump, so I drilled 3 holes in each bottle cap. You can use more or less holes depending on how fast you want to release the water. Then I cut off the bottom's of the bottles. These bottoms can be used for something else to, I just haven't figured it out yet. After screwing the caps with holes in them back on, I decided where I would like to put them.

One of the reasons for this project is to save trees from dehydration. When you have a big tree that is surrounded by grass, or shrubs, or anything for that matter you are at risk of causing your tree great stress. This stress is caused from dehydration, though you think " but I water regularly, how could my tree be thirsty?" it very well could be. What happens is that the grass, shrubs or other plant life is probably drinking up all the water before it can reach the roots of the bigger tree. This is something that slips the mind very easily when planning a garden. To combat this problem you need to install a deep irrigation system that bypasses the roots of these smaller plants before releasing the water. It just so happens that water bottles are great for this!

I have taken my new deep water irrigation system to my fruit trees and installed them. I dug holes deep enough to leave about 1-1.5 inches of the bottle sticking up out of the ground. This is to prevent dirt from getting in the bottle. It is a good idea to use strategic placement and place them under leaves and branches of other plants so the runoff of water when it rains will fill the bottles more. As an added bonus I added fertilizer to the bottles filling them up about a quarter of the way. I fill the bottles up when I am watering and the are filled up by the rain. I will eventually have this system installed all over my yard, I just need to drink more water first.

When it is all said and done you can't beat it. You get satisfaction because you have installed your own deep water irrigation system all by yourself. You have saved a ton of money, and not by switching any policy's around! And let's not forget that you have done something to save the environment and it wasn't even hard, and you didn't even have to go out of your way. If everyone used this system could you imagine the impact it would have on the environment, you could have 100 bottles or more in your yard and not even know it. If you multiply that by the number of yards in the world that's a lot of bottles. You get my drift, here are some pictures of my water bottle project! Thanks!