This is my first attempt to grow a vegetable garden.  I will try to document successes as well as failures so that I can do better next year and others might learn from my mistakes. 

    Go to this page to see what happened with my Spring 2009 Garden.

    Go to this page to see how my Fall 2009 - 2010 garden progresses.  It is growing right now!

    In Mediterranean Climates you can grow gardens right through the winter, so I expect many of the vegetables that didn't do well the spring garden will do better in the fall garden.  We shall see.
     I used water from our laundry to water the spring garden.  The pipe that drains our laundry is external and has an easily accessible escape valve.  So I simply capture the water manually using buckets and store it in large plastic trash cans.  I separate the wash and rinse cycle water into separate containers.  Then I use the wash water that has more detergent etc to water all our flowers.  I use the rinse water for the vegetables and fruit trees. 

Laundry water sytem

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This system is labor intensive, it requires that I am here and paying attention every time I do a laundry, and clearly not everyone has the drain pipe so easily accessible, although here in Israel it is fairly common.  
    There are other more sophisticated and automated systems available to collect grey water, but I think the best system if possible would  be to have  the laundry higher then the collection tanks and to let it drain into them.  The only complication would be a valve that automatically switched tanks from wash to rinse, but I am not sure that is necessary. 
    I have not used grey water for my fall garden mainly because I found out that Israel treates and then re-uses about 80% of all grey water.  (Please look at the comments below for more accurate information!)  So I was not saving as much water as I thought.

 

The seeds I used to start this garden were mainly commercial seeds that I bought at the garden stores.  I also used seeds that my friend brought me from her garden in Maine, even though it would be hard to imagine two climates more different.

 

Any comments or suggestions on gardening in a Mediterranean climate where there is no rain for about 7 months every year and water is scarce would be appreciated.

 

Results from Spring Garden

Fall Garden (growing right now!)

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