“Plant the rain.”
http://www.harvestingrainwater.com
http://www.desertharvesters.org/
In urban environments most rainwater falls onto impervious surfaces. The water runs off quickly, carrying litter and pollutants with it as it flows directly into creeks, rivers and oceans. Why not use this free resource to water your garden or lawn?
The benefits of harvesting rain are many. Rainwater falls from the sky for free. Rainwater doesn’t contain salt and is a natural fertilizer that’s great for plants. When you harvest rain, you help reduce flooding and surface runoff. Keeping your rain in your garden or yard can reduce your water bill. If you live in an area with little rain, don’t despair. Lancaster harvests over 100,000 gallons yearly (379,000 liters) of rain and runoff in the soil of his 1/8-acre home in Tuscon, AZ. (12″ or 305 mm of average annual rainfall per year.) Filmed at Santa Barbara City College Lifescape Garden.
Presenter: Brad Lancaster is a dynamic teacher, consultant, and designer of regenerative systems that sustainably enhance local resources and our global potential. He is the author of the award-winning, best-selling book series Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond.
Brad is the author of the award-winning books Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, www.HarvestingRainwater.com, and co-founder of DesertHarvesters.org. Brad is also a regenerative systems educator, designer, and consultant. In the Sonoran Desert, with just 11 inches of annual rainfall, he and his brother harvest about 100,000 gallons of rainwater a year on an eighth-acre urban lot and adjoining right-of-way. This harvested water is then turned into living air conditioners of food-bearing shade trees, abundant gardens, and a thriving landscape incorporating wildlife habitat, beauty, medicinal plants, and more. The goal of his book series and overall work is to empower his clients and community to make positive change in their own lives and neighborhoods—by harvesting and enhancing free on-site resources such as water, sun, wind, shade, community, and more. It’s catching on, as evidenced by tens of thousands of practitioners and demand for Brad’s work around the world.
In 1996 Lancaster and his neighbors started an annual tree planting project, which up until now has resulted in over 1,400 native food-bearing trees being planted (usually with water-harvesting earthworks) in the neighborhood. In 2004, Lancaster augmented the street tree planting by using a 14-inch, gas powered circular saw to cut away part of his curb to divert street runoff into his street-side tree basins. When the walkway in front of his home sprouted with life- like mesquite and palo verde trees- many of his neighbors wanted to cut their curbs as well. Lancaster approached the city to convince them to make his water-harvesting technique legal. It took three years for the city to change the rules. Today, three quarters of the neighbors on his block are harvesting rainwater.
Tucson receives just 11 inches of rainwater per year, but Brad argues this is enough. “Tucson has over a 4,000 year history of continuous farming despite this being a drylands desert community. People thrived creating crops, domesticating crops that are uniquely adapted to this climate, but in less than 100 years we almost wiped it out by becoming reliant on very extractive pumps, extracting the groundwater, diverting the river to the extent that we actually killed our river, we dropped our groundwater table over 300 feet so we didn’t want to plug into that paradigm.”
Today, Lancaster’s downtown Tucson neighborhood (Dunbar/Spring) is alive with drought-tolerant, food-bearing trees and residents harvest from the barrel cactus (chutneys, hair conditioner from fruit), the prickly pear cactus (juice, syrup & natural sweeteners from fruit), the ironwood tree (peanut-flavored nuts, processed like edamame), jojoba (oil, coffee substitute), mesquite (“native carob”, flour) and sweets from the “iconic saguaro cactus”.
