Ashley's "Laundry Garden" project

Hello Permies!

This thread will be for documenting the planning, build, and progress of my "Laundry Garden" project. I'm really hoping for some help on designing the garden.

I have a small flower garden at the front of my house. The wall the garden is along is right next to my washer and laundry sink inside the house. I would love to divert the grey water from my laundry to this front flower bed during the Spring and Summer months. This garden bed has been hard for me to keep up on irrigation and I would love to start using more grey water from my house. I thought a flower bed was a good way to test things out!

My plan is to add a split from where the plumbing goes to the septic tank, so that I could close off a valve for the Winter months.

I'm wonder how best to disperse the water throughout the bed to achieve a somewhat even water distribution. Added bonus if it doesn't use additional plastics!

Any suggestions? Experience? Concerns? Stoke?

Thanks ya'll!

That’s a really nice project, I’m hoping to do something similar so I can’t wait to read through your experience!

From my research so far I’ve gathered that a transitional recipient is something to consider as an opportunity to filter out lint and hair and because you might not need that much water all at once in your growing bed. I like passive filtering systems like the water going through a bed of sand and rocks and into a container under the garden bed and then fed through capilarity to the soil above. There’s lots of info on permies, I’ve been reading like crazy. I’ve also seen people choosing to send the water directly through the soil from the machine in places with desert like conditions or just overall great drainage.

Can’t wait to see all the responses.

Marie Gen wrote:I’ve also seen people choosing to send the water directly through the soil from the machine in places with desert like conditions or just overall great drainage.
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This is what I do when things are really dry around here (I'll be doing it today: it's been almost 100C for about a week and no rain). The first wash that has soap I will use to wash floors in the house, but the rinse water will drain into a barrel, where I have a long hose that siphons it out into the garden. I have been wanting to do something a bit more involved but this is not my forever house (hopefully we'll be out of here in 2 years) so I'm not putting much effort in. I don't worry much about soap, when it's this dry the plants will be happy for whatever water they get.
Details, if it matters: my garden is terraced, steep, with the water just going down. I will move the hose around maybe 6 times during the entire draining process. Most of the garden is relatively well mulched (and all the beds were hugeled at one time or another, so there's lots of good stuff in there) so I don't worry about watering everything specifically. My soil is clay, bakes into concrete in this drought, and right now i've got lots of green peppers, okra, long beans, basil, and passionfruit.

When I am short on water, I wash by hand.
It uses way less water.

Use a bio liquid soap for dishes and not much of it.
I use a couple of buckets in the bath tub.

I start with the bras and flimsy tops, leaving them to soak for a few minutes, then rise one at a time catching all the rinse water in the second bucket.

Next the underwear get spot cleaned with a bar of soap in the crotch, whether they need it or not, then get hot water rinsed into the FIRST bucket of soapy water. Next go the socks into the first bucket, and stay there for a while before scrubbing the bottoms for stuff stuck to the socks.

The rinse bucket has some bio soap added to it and then pants go in, soaking.

Eventually I end up using more buckets and/or soak/rinse in the bathtub, which I did have fit with a detour Y for grey water, which is often like new water.

The catch under the bathtub Y is in my basement with taps on it, so i can let go a small amount at a time, and there is a window to outdoors beside it, and I pass out a smaller bucket with 3 gallons (12L) at a time.

This means water can sit in the bathtub until i am back in the basement. I keep much of my pantry there because the kitchen is minute, so its no big deal running up and down stairs and helps keep me fit.

So my solution involves taking advantage of the bathtub greywater catchment, which uses far more water for bathing, and far less soap.

I also save my dishwater (another Y under the sink).

Once in a while (4-6x yearly) I use a laundromat in town, filling up 8-12 machines.

In the summer I use the washing machine i got for free, that leaks, in the garden beside the rain barrels.

I found my roses hate rinse water, but my hydrangeas are happy to tolerate soapy bio sock water that looks like soup, along with whatever comes from the rinse. I simply dump that soapy water uphill beside the hydrangeas and apply rinse water directly afterwards.

I know you have a kid too, so its more of a pain, but not really so bad, and you have your fiat, so you could combo hand wash and laundromat perhaps.

Washing by hand is fine for me: I've managed with hauling water before so it's still a relative luxury to have hot water not warmer up on a fire!

I drip dry and air dry, only squeezing out most of the water by hand, but if you hate wringing you could always put the clothes in the washer for the spin cycle.

I don't worry much about a bit of soap still in certain items: being its bio, it doesn't bother my skin like commercial laundry detergent does.

PS

I frequently run low on water because :
I am drawing off the top 120' of a 400' well because the pump went during late covid (of course!) And all that was available was 1/2HP with expired warranties at 70% off.

I was previously skimming off the top 120' of my well anyway, because the place was sold to me that way (the extra 250' wiring is expensive),  although I was ready to get a 3/4HP to replace the one already in there, and i had scrounged up more than enough wiring buying used pumps online for scrap price that came with tubing and wire (and 2 pumps that work that are fabulous for moving barrels of water down the property 30' apart relay style, a trick you may want to use in future once you get your new house.)


Happy gardening! It's -19C / 0F North of 66 in Iqaluit Nunavut right now! (I have a homestead in 4a in Quebec for the milder weather where is my slight water challenge.)

Moving off grid in AZ, looking to set up grey water garden using shower/washer h20.  Can't wait for more details on this project.

Hi Edward,

Welcome to Permies.

Depends where you live. I live in a subtropical arid zone of the canary islands and we made a bananacircle. We digged a 2 meter diameter hole to a delpht of 50 cm. You can find instructions on www.foodwatershelter.org.au
In the hole we throw garden cuttings. The greywaterpipe from the washing machine goes in the middle of the garden cuttings and not directly to the plants and we use biodegradable washing papers. The banana circle and the field around it is thriving since we did that and we can harvest bananas, papayas, turmeric and sweet potatoes. It is good to have access to the pipe which is in the hole because it can clogg up and needs from time to time to be cleaned.

Catrina, I love your banana circle!

Ra Kenworth wrote:Catrina, I love your banana circle!

Maybe not for climate zone😉stay warm.

Catrina Liesch wrote:

Ra Kenworth wrote:Catrina, I love your banana circle!

Maybe not for climate zone😉stay warm.

Ah yes, I love it! Perhaps not bananas but I love the idea. We hit -40C here so looking for some cold hardy perennials.

Ashley,  I am trying to start some zone 0 blueberries from squashed and abused berries rescued from among cigarette butts. I will start a post if I get any success.  Sorry OP not trying to hijack thread!

I have been wanting to do something a bit more involved but this is not my forever house

I do not understand why people have the mind set of "forever "homes.
Surely it stifles enjoyment of what you have and prevents improvement for the sake of it.
As for moving a hose, have you considered installing a manifold?

when i can see the exit, i don't see the point in investing in something that the next owners will just rip out (my garden space will be turned into a new house the moment we sell, undoubtedly). to put in a cistern and such would involve major construction.

hose manifold is an excellent idea for hooking up to a cistern, but i'm siphoning out of a (movable) garbage barrel-- large futon clothespins are holding it in place.

I had a similar situation, a valve that I closed during winter.  It allowed me to use the water from my bath tub and shower instead of sending it to the loval sewer.

The grey water came out the side of the house into a stock tank with a plug which mostly I left open.  From the plug hole the water went into a furrow that ran through a garden designed for it.  There were a couple branches of the furrow, with varying slopes.  The almost level furrows were soaking in furrows, but I also had a furrow with a steeper slope so that I could transport water to the far end of the garden and not lose most of it into the soil along the way.

It was an arid setting in an arid region with alkaline soil, and had been abandoned.  When I was digging I discovered it had been used as an ash dump, there were LOTS of ashes and some associated trash- metal, broken china, and glass.  I used to water with roof run off and sometimes domestic water too as I wanted to mitigate so much alkalinity while inviting soil microbes to come establish themselves.

Bath products used were hand made soap, avocado oil, essential oils, epsom salts and very stingy amounts of a select brand of shampoo.  Skin care products being washed off,  hand made skin cream emulsified with borax and beeswax.

Plants I grew: cosmos, Rocky Mountain bee plant (Cleome serrulata)  sunflowers, big bluestem grass, hollyhocks, lemon balm, mint, chives, parsley, onions, viburnum, “jerusalem artichokes”, elderberry.  Strawberries refused to grow in that location.

I mulched the beds with chips, compost snd grass clippings because evaporation would concentrate all the salts in the soil.  

I got a fair amount of growth on the plants, and beautiful flowers reseeded themselves.

Ra Kenworth wrote:Ashley,  I am trying to start some zone 0 blueberries from squashed and abused berries rescued from among cigarette butts. I will start a post if I get any success.  Sorry OP not trying to hijack thread!

Oh I would love to see an update on the blueberries!

John C Daley wrote:

I have been wanting to do something a bit more involved but this is not my forever house

I do not understand why people have the mind set of "forever "homes.
Surely it stifles enjoyment of what you have and prevents improvement for the sake of it.

I'm afraid I'm very much stuck in this mindset, as you call it, right now. I'm on 2.38 acres overrun by bindweed but which brings forth tons of beautiful greenery in the summer and tons of sloppy mud in the winter. I could walk away from it with only a little sadness. But the house is another story. Eleven years ago, my husband and I turned it from a run down, ant and mice infested, neglected 100 year old cabin into a cute little farmhouse with every thing I want (except more room for a bigger pantry). It was such a labor of love (and broken bones) that I'm finding it extremely difficult to leave it. We just get ourselves attached to the strangest things, I think.

Edward Wirth wrote:Moving off grid in AZ, looking to set up grey water garden using shower/washer h20.  Can't wait for more details on this project.

Welcome Edward Wirth!  Lots of information and support here!

Any recommendations for a good laundry detergent that would be plant friendly? Or recipe for DIY laundry detergent/soap?

Looks like I'll really have to limit my use of borax. I only use it currently because of washing cloth diapers. Hopefully my little will be out of diapers around June anyway.  

Just curious about borax concerns, of course we don’t want much in the soil, but any other reasons?

I think the objectives in product use are in not loading the soil with salts, alkalinity and toxicity.  I just don’t know the chemistry on all those words on the ingredient list.

I do know that while vinegar neutralizes soda, together they create salts.

I think it might be important to look at the quality of your water.  If it’s hard water with lots of minerals, then simple soap is going to contribute to hard water deposits….

Nevermind me!  This post is going nowhere, just wordiness in trying to say “I don ‘t know”.

I think it might be a topic for its own thread, where we could explore the needs of hard and soft water, what surfactants are more fungi friendly etc.

If someone creates such a thread be sure to invite me!