GARDEN TALES

Drought Advice - the Water of Life

I often wonder do gardeners as well as homeowners throughout Ireland try hard enough to conserve & recycle the amount of water they use in the garden & in the home. We are all aware of the dwindling reserves of natural ground water. Coupled with reduced rainfall this has created the problem of acute water shortage. The UK is experiencing more severe drought than previous years. We would do well to put into practice the art of water conservation. Think practically & please conserve or recycle water as much as possible. The following water conservation advice should be printed off & taped to the door of your fridge. It is common sense advice & it is in all our interests that we apply it daily.
Remember: Water is essential to both plant & animal life. Without water plants, humans & animals perish.

Conserve Water:

• Install a water butt
• Use a water diverter to collect water from the roof into the butt
• Water plants when they most need it - at the initial growing phase
• Water plants in the evening or the early morning not in the heat of the day
• Don't water your lawn, instead reduce the amount of times you mow it so that the blades of grass shade each other
• Mix water retaining gel into compost for hanging baskets & pots
• Once soil is wet keep it moist by applying a mulch 2'' to 3'' deep
• Vegetables can also be mulched

Grey Water:

• Recycle bath water as long as you don't use too much soap
• Re-use kitchen sink water. Oily & fatty water can smell so cover with soil
• Grey water should only be applied to open ground not to plants growing in pots or containers
• Don't put grey water onto salad crops
• Never, ever irrigate your plants with sea water because the salt will eventually kill the plants & damage soil bacteria & organisms
  

Plants useful for coping with lack of water:

• Stachys lanata - Lamb's Ear
• Atriplex
• Helichrysum italicum - Curry Plant
  
• Yucca
• Euphorbia
• Lavender
• Thymus - Thyme
• Sage
• Artemisia
• Cotoneaster

It is also recommended that you grow plants with grey silver foliage, small leaves, bulbous plants like Amaryllis and plants such as Cyclamen hederifolium which like being at the base of south facing walls.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gardening Advice:
Lime applied or sprinkled onto broadleaved weeds (such as Veronica & Speedwell etc) growing in a lawn or elsewhere will change the physical conditions of the soil. Lime will eventually reduce the broadleaved weed population. The lime will enable the lawn grass to thrive.

Vegetable seed sowing: Tomatoes, cucumbers & peppers seeds can still be sown at this time of the season. Gardeners who sowed these vegetable seeds several weeks ago probably wont see plants growing that well due to the severe frosts that occurred.

Rhubarb one of the earliest vegetables is coming up now. 'Holstein Blood Red' is an excellent early variety of rhubarb with rich, deep blood-red leaves.

Topsoil in the UK is categorised in three grades according to the quality standard (BS 3882 1992):

1. Premium - the best quality available
2. General purpose - suitable for most garden conditions
3. Poor - not to be used in any gardening situation

Dr Kim Evans in the UK is an expert on the quality of topsoil. Here in Ireland I doubt if there is a quality standard for top soil because as a gardener I have observed some fairly awful top soil. So terrible infact that it doesn't deserve to be labelled 'topsoil'!

posted by Thomas @ 7:19 pm