Six Cents / 100 Gallons
I have an excellent book on New Mexico gardening, and it starts with one simple fact: there is no gardening here without irrigation. Period.
Ancient Pueblo Indians had no crops without irrigation, and the current citizens of the city have no gardens --- even xeric, water-wise, drought tolerant gardens well mulched --- without watering them.
Santa Fe gets about 14 inches of rain a year, so I thought I knew what that meant: just over an inch a month. But I misunderstood. It does not rain an inch a month here.
It rains 5 or 6 inches in brief half hour bursts in summer that fill arroyos with flash floods and then it doesn't rain again at all. Not a drop. More quick bursts happen sporadically and eventually it totals 14 inches for the year, but the stretches between short rain events are long and uninterrupted. (Then there's this year, which is in the midst of a totally rainless drought.)
What the gardening book meant is that you have no crop, no ornamentals, no plants at all unless you provide all the water in the long months when no rain falls. Street trees are on drip systems; the water to irrigate the ones in our neighborhood are paid for in our HOA fees. The Santa Fe Botanical Garden features native, dry-loving plants, and all are on drip irrigation.
I did not understand that rainfall is not only scanty, it is highly intermittent and sporadic.
Surprisingly, our home water bill in New Mexico is less than what we paid in New England. Municipal water rates are very high here, but our usage is low, and our net outlay for water, averaged for a year, is a considerable savings.
We are not irrigating a lawn, which took an enormous amount of water in Connecticut, so that's the main difference. I don't take many baths, which I kind of miss. I have a 2 gallon bucket standing in the shower stall -- as I wait for the water to heat up enough to get in the shower, the bucket fills. After every shower I tote 2 gallons out to the aspen trees and give them a little water.
Santa Fe is at the top of the nation for water rates -- we pay over six cents per 100 gallons (and if you exceed 7,000 gallons a month the fee is a whopping 21 cents per 100 gallons! Our household uses 3,000 gallons a month so we don't hit that second pricing tier, but it's a real motivator for bigger homes and businesses.)
For comparison, the average per gallon rate for other states is less than one cent per 100 gallons.
But Santa Fe residents are at the top of the nation for water conservation too. Nobody has a lawn. Everybody is aware of water use and rain capture. There's a phone app that tracks gallons of usage by the hour, by the day, by the month and on and on, with bar graphs and color charts. I check it often and it keeps water conservation top of mind. There's a leak detection app for your phone too.
There's even a city hotline to call if you see water being wasted somewhere. Phew.
I can track that it costs me $1.20 every time I take a long hot shower, using about 20 gallons. Or I can skip a shower one day and spend $1.20 to water the pine trees in front -- that takes 20 gallons as well. (Um, that's wrong. The rate is six cents per hundred gallons, plus an add on fixed fee, not six cents a gallon.) I know this stuff now. I see every last gallon as it's used on my phone bar charts.
As I think about the gardens I want to put in here, I need to plan how I'll water them. I need to consider not just what drought tolerant plants to put in, but how to totally support even the most xeric plants for all their water needs for the long stretches when there is no rain. I'll have to figure out how often to water and when and how much.
Right down to the gallon.
(Excited update as of February 15 -- we got three quarters of an inch of steady, soft drizzly rain overnight! The morning broke gray and cold and damp -- conditions I detested in Connecticut, but welcome here.)
 |
| Baker Morrow: Best Plants for New Mexico Gardens |
Ancient Pueblo Indians had no crops without irrigation, and the current citizens of the city have no gardens --- even xeric, water-wise, drought tolerant gardens well mulched --- without watering them.
Santa Fe gets about 14 inches of rain a year, so I thought I knew what that meant: just over an inch a month. But I misunderstood. It does not rain an inch a month here.
It rains 5 or 6 inches in brief half hour bursts in summer that fill arroyos with flash floods and then it doesn't rain again at all. Not a drop. More quick bursts happen sporadically and eventually it totals 14 inches for the year, but the stretches between short rain events are long and uninterrupted. (Then there's this year, which is in the midst of a totally rainless drought.)
What the gardening book meant is that you have no crop, no ornamentals, no plants at all unless you provide all the water in the long months when no rain falls. Street trees are on drip systems; the water to irrigate the ones in our neighborhood are paid for in our HOA fees. The Santa Fe Botanical Garden features native, dry-loving plants, and all are on drip irrigation.
 |
| Santa Fe Botanical Garden Drip irrigation is well concealed, but the whole garden is irrigated |
I did not understand that rainfall is not only scanty, it is highly intermittent and sporadic.
Surprisingly, our home water bill in New Mexico is less than what we paid in New England. Municipal water rates are very high here, but our usage is low, and our net outlay for water, averaged for a year, is a considerable savings.
We are not irrigating a lawn, which took an enormous amount of water in Connecticut, so that's the main difference. I don't take many baths, which I kind of miss. I have a 2 gallon bucket standing in the shower stall -- as I wait for the water to heat up enough to get in the shower, the bucket fills. After every shower I tote 2 gallons out to the aspen trees and give them a little water.
 |
| The Santa Fe river runs through town, and meets the Rio Grande west of the city. It doesn't actually have this much water in it right now. |
Santa Fe is at the top of the nation for water rates -- we pay over six cents per 100 gallons (and if you exceed 7,000 gallons a month the fee is a whopping 21 cents per 100 gallons! Our household uses 3,000 gallons a month so we don't hit that second pricing tier, but it's a real motivator for bigger homes and businesses.)
For comparison, the average per gallon rate for other states is less than one cent per 100 gallons.
But Santa Fe residents are at the top of the nation for water conservation too. Nobody has a lawn. Everybody is aware of water use and rain capture. There's a phone app that tracks gallons of usage by the hour, by the day, by the month and on and on, with bar graphs and color charts. I check it often and it keeps water conservation top of mind. There's a leak detection app for your phone too.
There's even a city hotline to call if you see water being wasted somewhere. Phew.
As I think about the gardens I want to put in here, I need to plan how I'll water them. I need to consider not just what drought tolerant plants to put in, but how to totally support even the most xeric plants for all their water needs for the long stretches when there is no rain. I'll have to figure out how often to water and when and how much.
Right down to the gallon.
(Excited update as of February 15 -- we got three quarters of an inch of steady, soft drizzly rain overnight! The morning broke gray and cold and damp -- conditions I detested in Connecticut, but welcome here.)
Comments