Los Angeles Watering Restrictions

Update: (July 25, 2009): "Councilman Greig Smith introduced a motion Friday, July 24 seeking to change the Department of Water and Power's (DWP) two-day-per-week lawn watering restrictions to three days a week in an effort to help homeowners save their lawns and save additional water.

"The twice-a-week restrictions are turning people's lawns brown, which hurts home values in our neighborhoods," Councilman Smith said. "For more than a decade we have had a policy of greening, not browning L.A."

The motion would change the restriction from Monday and Thursday, 15 minutes per day, as it is currently, to Monday, Wednesday and Saturday for 8 minutes per day. This would help lawns, trees and shrubs survive while still meeting conservation goals. It would even reduce watering by 6 minutes per home per week, saving many thousands of gallons of water.

Read entire article: Councilman Smith Seeks to Change Lawn Watering Restrictions from Two Days to Three Days a Week to Help Homeowners Save Their Lawns and Save More Water

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Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I don't use sprinklers very much in my garden, but even alternative methods like soaker and drip are effected by the watering restrictions passed by the City of Los Angeles on June 1, 2009. After getting conflicting answers on the subject, I went to LADWP.com and got the word from the "horse's mouth". (LA Water Restrictions PDF Flyer)

It is illegal to...

• Water using sprinklers on any day other than Monday and Thursday
• Water landscaping – including lawns - between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.
• Water using sprinklers for more than 15 minutes per watering station, 10 minutes for other irrigation systems
• Use water on any hard surfaces such as sidewalks, walkways,driveways or parking areas
• Allow runoff onto streets and gutters from excessive watering
• Allow leaks from any pipe or fixture to go unrepaired
• Wash vehicles without using a hose with a shut-off nozzle
• Serve water to customers in restaurants unless requested

Source: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

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Concrete Bag Retaining Walls from Dirt du Jour

I came across this great idea in the Dirt du Jour gardening blog and newsletter. This reminds me of a similar idea for creating resilient paths in your garden by combining decomposed granite (DG) and concrete powder and then wetting it in place.

Hold them hills

Great idea in a backyard vegetable garden I visited in San Clemente. These concrete “stones” are easy to make and work beautifully at terracing a slope.

Here is how the gardener did it: She stacked bags of dry concrete in a row, then wet down the bags for a week or until the concrete hardened. Once hard, she tore off the paper wrapping.
Then she stacked another row on top of the first, wetting the second row of concrete bags, waited for the concrete to harden and then removed the paper - and so on until she had her vegetables beds at a height that worked for her.

Easy. Cheap. Not bad looking, and entirely doable.

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