Rainwater Garden Project - Desert Permaculture 2015 

I love your system and wish more of us would make these simple and effective water Catchments. Great Video and TFS!

Wow! I have to say I'm very impressed. You've got an inexpensive, down-to-earth approach (no pun intended) that really works. You've obviously done your research.

Great use of our natural resources. Love the ingenuity and simplicity. Thanks for the walkabout.

Smart designed, capturing all that valuables waters for small garden. It surprised me that it rain that much in Arizona. Lots fun project to do with the family.

I like the arrow telling the water which way to go! :D

Love the rain footage. The gardens are looking really nice!

I know this is old ....hey who cares? I love this. Amazing,clever,cool! Thanks for sharing.

Real cool. I like the little dam to hold back some dirt. I like using rocks and stones to control soil soil erosion.

So nice and so thoughtful from you to put an arrow pointing the way so the water doesn't go in the wrong direction.

I can't wait for my jack hammer to arrive so I can start busting up compacted clay and caliche. Gonna build basins, slow the water, plant the rain and terraform, heavy mulching, wood chips everywhere, rainwater harvesting with drip system. I've got big plans.

Sweet! Simple and effective! Very nice. :)

Bending nature to your will, and making it look pretty. Nice job!

Nicely done! Very elegant

You the man in the desert, Joe! As with your fruit trees, another simple but effective system. Your thought process and planning is definitely paying off. Well done again. Be safe.

DEF inspirational, and see that I need to work on somethings here for spring snow melt and run off. So many ideas, thanks again!!!

Aaron I can't believe you're doing this! It's pretty cool buddy!

LOVE IT!...we'll be using this as well on the arizona homestead!

Great setup! We are trying different ways to keep the water on the homestead here so it waters our property instead of runoff. Super excited that Colorado has lifted the ban on rain barrels now.

Very well put together. Learned more than I should have. Thanks

Ingenious system and works well. Great video

Well done & piece of mind

Very smart, I love it!

Genius! I got my land cheap because there is a wash across the front. I thought it could be used to my advantage for rain collection. You have shown me it can. Thank you

I love this stuff

You're knocking it out of the park! Woo Hooo!!! Way to go :)

I like the way that the corn is planted. Corn is a grass, and grass likes to grow in clumps, or as a sod.

Seems like a pretty awesome set up you have there. I really like the way you are dealing with the resources you have available.

Just thinking, but if you were to lay plastic in a depression over a large area, fill it with sand and earth, and plant your raised garden beds over/on top of it, it would hold the rainwater in the soil and allow the garden plants greater access to the water. Like creating a water table a few feet down. It would be a large project, but possible with a Bobcat excavator. Awesome job by the way! Love the way you think outside the box!

found this by accident along time ago, but couldnt find it if i tried . this showed up on my recs again and watching it. hope u r doing well.

That is awesome! Thanks for the ideas!

i love these type of videos. amazing ideas, good work

That was some good flow! Great use of your surroundings and nature. I'm reminded of the first time I saw the lawns "watered" out in front of Old Main. Who doesn't lay a foot deep of water on a lawn?😀 Go Cats beat Nevada! Bear Down!!

Amazing!

There might be a use for some hugelkultur beds in there to help hold more water and create some really good soil. Nice job!

Muy bien, recolectando el agua de la lluvia. Sí señor, gran idea !!!.

this is awesome! you've given me some ideas for my own garden.

Nice, pretty cool, good job

What a good system, nice one.

nice project guy. Seems like fun.

this is so cool!

Great job.

Ingenious 👏👏👏👏

Hey subscribed a cpl months, love your vids. Truly inspiring.

Great job. Keep up with the great videos. You are extremely resourceful.

i like your advanced irrigation system :)

Have you thought about using woodchips to help retain more water and help create better topsoil over time? Great system by the way, subscribed :)

good job, looks great!

One of my favorite things to do is walk around in the morning checking out my property with a cup of coffee. You might need more then one cup on your property. Nice water management system. 😎

wow..nice work!!

Wow, very envious here.

That is Fantastic! I'm going to do this in one small area where I really could use a system like this. Thank you SO much! Bless, Sheila

Very well thought out, love it!

Great project! It is great to finally find someone doing AZ gardening. I'm just down the road from you in SV and you have given me a few ideas about my place.

watching here in Qatar.godbless!

That is well thought out. Nice job. Looking good. Douglas

A nice low maintenance water catchment system. if you dug a second reservoir at the last overflow (4'x4'x4') you could plant a few fruit trees, if you were so inclined.

Cool project man, I love stuff like this!

Cool idea. I need to do something like this

very nice! i think more mulch to cover spillways and before damb will help to filter water and slowing vaporisation

Joe, thats a great proof of concept model. I saw where you said you were going to expand it. Just my humble suggestion, but have you considered starting your rain collection with swales at the highest part(s) of your property? You could build your micro ponds at the overflow of the level sills of your swales. That way the water entering your micro ponds would have already settled out a large amt of the sediment. By starting higher in the landscape you can stack functions reduce erosion, rehydrate your entire property and use gravity for irrigation. By what i saw in the video it looks like you still have an excess water leaving your property. Additionally, you can expand down slope over time adding more swales, micro pods, etc as you go. What you have already done is an amazing example of what permaculture design can do . Keep up the great work. Jarrett

nicely done!

Great video

cool ideas, thanks for the video

That is a beautiful setup you have there. Add some rocks to the channel and it looks like a river plus it can slow down the water coming down.

Nice video! Thank you!

dude that is a great way to use rainwater

grate system!

good shit man. enjoyed the video a lot too

great ideas

Great idea. You should have living plants everywhere that will stabilize the ground and microclimate and prewenting high evaporation. In oposite: it will help condensing water in the evening.

absolutely fantastic I love your way of thinking someday when I get my own place of land here in ozz I will use your ideas if you don't mind I have subed and liked your videos and and keep learning from them

Keep up the good work greatting from Montagnard indigenous.

You've got some major flow there! I'd be setting up some more growing beds and catchment downhill.

Cool to see an update on this! Looks like you've been getting some good veggies from it.

This guy is awesome. I wish I lived in a desert, so I could make it green. :-D

Very good idea, I enjoyed watching all of your garden and rain collection system, also love your chicken. we homeschool our kids and hope we can come by and visit your homesteadonomics some day soon if you welcome visitors. We live in CA. We hope to learn some of your idea. Do you have fish pond?

Brilliant :)

Rainwater gardens + Rainwater swales + Rainwater Level Spreader - lawn care and plantings? Swales near side less of a angle and can be cut, farside challenge to cut. Going to plant a few types of flower / plantings that require winter stratification. Like the red twig dogwoods in the bottom of one of my Rain Gardens that I placed medium River Rock in the bottom -

Very interesting Maaan... Within 100 years the area will be full of trees...🙂👍

I would definitely mulch and at tree canopy cover. The flow of that water should be slowed more too. Longer it sits the more likely the water is to soak deep.

Nice work :)

Great set up. .I remember you said your were gonna give us a tour of your property. .it would be helpful if you did. I have an acre property In Hesperia ca..also desert.and I'm looking for some ideas to set up an and arrange my homestead .

Simple... simple ideas work best.

I love what you have done. I wonder if you have heard of wicking beds or ollas for irrigation. I recently build a rain harvesting system which collects in barrels like the ones you have, and then via gravity they fill some ollas, the ollas then slowly sip the water into the ground, so I don't have to do anything. The water also fills a wicking bed which controls the level with a float level switch. The whole system runs only on the rain, no electricity, no anything. You already take the work to put the excess water in there so once you build it would be effortless. If it were me i'll try to do some kind of terraces so I wouldn't even need to do that, and if that doesn't work, a solar powered pump to fill the barrels. Just a suggestion, your setup is already great. I hope to see more updates of your it!

Good thinking!

cool!

Farmer's Almanac says 21-22 rainfall in Southwest will be average. This may be a good time to build additional storage.

New here...this is impressive. Tjank you for the cleaR demonstration. What is the retangular basin made of?

have you thought about getting some wire cattle panels the 16 foot long ones and making a arch over the tank and growing squash on that for shade or 6x6 concrete re enforcing wire the kind they bury in wet cement ?

Kool any Expansions like that would make a good silt pond if you wanna dig out a bigger pond after it

Very interresting. Djamel from Algeria.

Another great idea! Any new changes to the project?

Did you watch rainwater patterns that were already present and make use of them or did the water previously just run along the road? Fantastic job!!!!

Nice bro

love your stuff Joe, ever thought about sorghum? might be a good change of pace from corn, its hardier.

looks great just wondering if you use mosquito dunks since it is a open pond :-) thanks

That looks like it works great, Joe! How deep is the retention pond? Also have you thought about adding a second pond lower down to collect more of that water?

great! does ever the water tank get dry in arid season?

you need to dig out a few more ponds if water is scarce, also hook the ponds up to a hand pump which feeds into a drip hose in the plant borders, makes it quicker and easier to maintain leaving you more time for other projects, vids and life in general....... and doesnt break the back. when i find a property to buy i am definitly going to be reviewing your vids in detail again to see what i can do before i start building so i can plan it out... first thing food growing and easy watering, maintenance, followed by renewables and then house.

Awesome project! I'm lazier than you, though. I would set up a solar powered pump to do the irrigation part for me 😉