Introduction

Do you like gardening but have limited time? Has your investment in plants been lost due to drought or extreme temperatures? Is it difficult to water your plants on a regular basis because you are busy and travel a lot? Do you hate the hot and humid summer, overgrowing weeds and mosquitoes to maintain a beautiful garden? Take advantage of spring rain and bring a TreeDiaper^® garden mat into your garden! Stretch your water supply! TreeDiaper^® garden mat is a special version of TreeDiaper^® brand designed for garden lovers. The TreeDiaper^® garden mat product is the only landscape irrigation product to combine the functions of slow release irrigation, automatic recharging with natural precipitation, weed control, and protection against extreme weather conditions (winter and summer) into one low-cost package.

Overview of Case Studies

In July 2014 a field test was started in the community garden of the town of Ashland, Virginia. July 2014 was in the middle of a seasonal drought. Two presoaked TreeDiaper^® garden mats, GardenMat- 9 (measures 1.5'x6' or 9 sq. ft) and flowers were planted into the precut holes. The flowers were then watered with a water hose thoroughly. Soil moisture was checked on a weekly basis. It was designed that when soil moisture is below 3 (on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the driest and 10 being damping wet), watering these flowers with a water hose.

Results

The soil moisture was never below 3 for the rest of the year in 2014. In May 2015, flowers were planted right before a forecasted rainfall. Therefore these flowers were not watered even on the day they were planted. No manual watering was needed for the whole year of 2015. In April 2016, flowers were again planted right before a forecasted rain. No manual watering was needed for the whole year of 2016. Prior to May 2017, this garden was manually watered only once in July 2014.

Starting 2017, we started to grow vegetables. So we watered on the first day when we started it. Same thing was repeated in 2018.
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