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Three things are required for optimal garden soil: OWL, or oxygen, water, and life. Photo: SDCWA

Gardening Like A Wise Old OWL

/in , /by by Water News Network staff

Your landscaping soil needs three things to feed the billions of microbes within it that can transform brick-hard, lifeless dirt into healthy, living soil: Oxygen, Water, and Life. Or in shorthand: OWL. 

Oxygen Lets Microbes Breathe Free 

Oxygen is needed by plant roots and soil organisms. Healthy soil has lots of tiny pockets of air. When soils are eroded, graded, or disturbed, their structure becomes compacted and hard. Compaction takes place when air and water bubbles are squeezed out of the soil. This kills the healthy microbes that replenish soil. Microbes can be killed by fertilizers, pesticides, or even heavy traffic from people or vehicles. 

Water For Your Microbes and Your Plants 

Microbes and plants need water to live. But too much water in your soil will displace oxygen by saturating the soil. This creates an anaerobic condition — and unhealthy microbes like bacteria, viruses, or parasites prefer anaerobic soil. If this condition persists, diseases may develop that endanger the health of your garden.   

Water is constantly moving through the soil. Water in the soil needs to be replenished as plants use it, as it evaporates from the soil surface, and as gravity pulls it down past the root zone of your plants. 

Bring Your Soil To Life  

Life in the soil includes all the bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, and fungi, the food they eat, the excretions they make, and the root systems they sustain. Living microbes are most quickly incorporated into your soil by adding high-quality compost.  

Plants attract microbes to their roots by feeding them carbon. Bacteria and fungi hold the soil together with microscopic glues and binders. The microbes consume organic matter, and then they are consumed by bigger creatures (worms, ants, slugs, centipedes, larvae, etc.), which are consumed in turn by creatures further up the food chain.  

Carbon and other nutrients cycle through these many life forms, creating healthy living soil, no matter what the soil type.  

Without these three elements, landscaping will not thrive. Organic matter, planning and some labor may be involved, but creating healthy soil using the OWL method will pay off in reduced maintenance, reduced inputs, reduced pollution on land and in our waterways, and the beauty of your thriving, healthy landscape.   

 Get Your Free Sustainable Lanscapes Program Guidebook

This article was inspired by the 71-page Sustainable Landscapes Program guidebook available at SustainableLandscapesSD.org. Hardcopies are available free of charge at the Water Authority’s headquarters, 4677 Overland Ave., Kearny Mesa. The Water Authority and its partners also offer other great resources for landscaping upgrades, including free WaterSmart classes at WaterSmartSD.org.   

 

 

  

Court Rules No Inverse Condemnation For California Water Districts In Copper Pipe Case

/in , /by /Legal Newslineby Dawn Geske

The California Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, Division Three has shot down the appeal of a resident of Laguna Niguel that claimed the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California damaged her copper piping. According to the court opinion filed by Associate Justice Raymond J. Ikola, plaintiff Lisa Williams filed a lawsuit claiming MWD added a chemical to the tap water that damaged her copper pipes. The opinion states that the chemical was authorized by regulation and that “it is undisputed that the water districts complied with all statutory and regulatory standards.”

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Forecast For California: More Frequent Wild Weather Swings

/in , /by /Yale Climate Connections (New Haven, Conn.)by Bruce Lieberman

Many people are attracted to large parts of California for their reliably pleasant Mediterranean climate. It can be a welcome break for visitors weary of Nor’easters and scorching summers. But in coming decades, California and the rest of the West Coast could see increasingly wild swings in weather – a consequence of continued climate change. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in Nature Climate Change by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles, UC-Irvine, and The Nature Conservancy. T

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Deeply Talks: Protecting Native Fish In The Delta

/in , /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Ian Evans

In this episode of Deeply Talks, Tara Lohan, Water Deeply’s managing editor, speaks with University of California, Davis fisheries experts Peter Moyle and John Durand about the challenges and opportunities for fish restoration in the California Delta. The Delta is a critical artery for California’s water. The estuary is the outlet for two of the state’s most important rivers – the Sacramento and San Joaquin – and it is a main source of the water transported south through the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project.

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Environmentalists’ Lawsuit To Drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir Heads Back To Court

/in , /by /The Mercury News (San Jose)by Paul Rogers

Two years after losing in court and six years after being rejected by voters, a Berkeley environmental group is continuing its long-running battle to drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, a linchpin of the water supply for 2.6 million Bay Area residents from San Francisco to San Jose to southern Alameda County. The reservoir in Yosemite National Park, built in 1923, violates California’s constitution, according to a lawsuit from the nonprofit group, Restore Hetch Hetchy, because the constitution requires water to be diverted in a “reasonable” way, and there are other places to store Hetch Hetchy’s water that aren’t in a national park.

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After Years Of Skepticism, San Diego Supports Massive Water Project

/in , /by /Voice Of San Diegoby Ry Rivard Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

The San Diego County Water Authority now supports Gov. Jerry Brown’s twin tunnels project, a $17 billion plan to carry water south from the rivers of Northern California. For five years, the Water Authority has been one of the fiercest critics of the plan. It’s worked since 2013 with environmental groups opposed to the tunnels, and it’s spent countless employee hours trying to undermine the project. Just last month, Water Authority representatives tried to prevent Southern California’s largest water agency from spending $11 billion on the project.

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Dire Challenges Facing Colorado River Water Lifeline

/in , /by /Arizona Daily Sunby Tony Davis

A bruising battle between the Central Arizona Project and many states and water users has revitalized the push for a stillborn plan to prepare for more drought on the Colorado River. The original dustup was over whether the CAP was seeking to “game the system” of reservoir operations at lakes Mead and Powell to benefit itself at the expense of the river’s Upper Basin states: Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. That’s prompted new talks to try to also resolve longstanding differences with another of CAP’s adversaries, the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

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OPINION: The State Knew Disaster Awaited The Salton Sea In 2018 And Didn’t Do Enough. That Has To Change

/in , /by /Los Angeles Times

The Salton Sea is a natural wonder in deep trouble. And for the past 10-plus years, state officials have known this problem would grow worse if action was not taken by 2018. So while the Imperial Irrigation District honored its legal commitment to pour water into the shrinking Salton Sea until 2018, the state has backed away from its responsibility for funding for remediation. Now the water has stopped and more and more of the sea’s toxin-laden shoreline is being exposed.

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New Set Of Scores Released For Water Bond Projects

/in , /by /Chico Enterprise-Recordby Steve Schoonover

Water storage projects seeking money from Proposition 1 got another round of scoring Friday from the California Water Commission staff, adding a little more clarity to what will get how much. Proposition 1, a water bond measure passed in November 2014, included $2.7 billion for new water storage in the state. Twelve projects initially sought a share of that money, including Sites Reservoir, a proposed 1.8 million acre-foot off-stream reservoir west on Maxwell in Colusa County.

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6 Things To Know About Dire Challenges To Our Colorado River Water Lifeline

/in , /by /Arizona Daily Starby Tony Davis

A bruising battle between the Central Arizona Project and many states and water users has revitalized the push for a stillborn plan to prepare for more drought on the Colorado River. The original dust-up was over whether the CAP was seeking to “game the system” of reservoir operations at lakes Mead and Powell to benefit itself at the expense of the river’s Upper Basin states: Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming.

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