The Watering Can Report

A writer for a regional 'lifestyle' magazine called yesterday.  They are doing a feature on 'fun' watering cans for an upcoming issue and wanted some gardening tips to go along with the watering can story.  I'm not the family expert on watering cans, but one of Betty's most popular programs is called 'Water Smart Gardening', so I figured she was the right person to speak to the writer.

The result was, shall we say, something other than what the reporter expected.

As near as I could tell, the writer is a young freelancer eager to turn in a 'feel-good' piece that her editor will like.  She already had spoken with the designers and manufacturers of the watering cans that would be featured in the piece; all she needed now was some stuff from a gardener; what to water and what to plant - that sort of thing.

Betty started with some physics: a gallon of water weighs eight pounds.  So, a two-gallon watering can requires the person wielding it to lug around sixteen pounds of water.  Water an entire vegetable garden with one?  Come on!  Get serious!  If the water spigot is 100 feet from the garden and the garden is 20 feet by 20 feet, that's 400 square feet of garden area. 

Betty then noted that shallow watering of a garden encourages shallow roots, which dry out quickly in heat and sun.  A gardener needs to soak the soil down a foot to encourage deep root growth.  How many gallons does that take?  Lots.  Probably a hundred gallons of water on a hot day... and all of it carried a hundred feet eight pounds at a time?  Do the math....

OK, the writer asked, how about watering the houseplants?  What's wrong with a nice, little watering can for that purpose?  Well sure, Betty said, as long as you make certain you've allowed the chlorine in the water to evaporate.  Betty explained that chlorine is a salt and that she keeps around half a dozen gallon-size plastic milk jugs to collect the water that runs out our taps while we're bringing up hot water for washing or bathing.  We let the water stand in the garage overnight and that's the water - once it warms up - that we use to water our houseplants.  In the summer, we use water straight from our rain barrels.

"Then do you use a watering can?" the reporter asked, hopefully.

"No, the milk jugs work just fine," Betty replied. 

"How about watering your container gardens?"

Betty explained that for our exploding population of containers, we have a basement full of two- and three-gallon jugs that originally held cat litter.  Those, too, we fill from rain barrels.

The interview went on for a while longer, but the chances are extrememly slim that any of Betty's excellent gardening tips are going to make it into print.  Lifestyle magazines depend on ads, and advertisers want readers who are eager to drop $50 or $100 on a designer watering can.  Experts who suggest substituting cat-litter containers and milk jugs just aren't a desirable demographic.

Which is why Betty's excellent blog (http://www.bettyongardening.com/) will likely never carry ads.  But it's also why she is consistently one of the top-rated and most-in-demand speakers on the garden club circuit.  You win some, you lose some. 

The reporter is likely still reeling.