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Tips to survive the dry weather

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  • WaysideWayside Posts: 845
    edited July 2018
    If there are only a couple of you, getting a water metre is worth it.  Unless you are the type that uses the hose with gay abandon.  I couldn't believe the non-metered rate, so we switched.
  • WaysideWayside Posts: 845
    I seem to find many a teaspoon in the compost heap.
  • IamweedyIamweedy Posts: 1,364
    Well I have just created a small experiment and chopped off most of the very crispy leaves of some the of the already dried out hardy perennials.

     Hardy (including Lychnis coronaria and the Japanese Anemonies).  I was wondering if the less water stress they get by cutting back the foilage the more likely they are to survive.  
    I did choose two types of perennials that are pretty much indestructable.
     What does anyone else think?  



    'You must have some bread with it me duck!'

  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    I can't believe the metered rate. I won't switch until i have to.
  • UpNorthUpNorth Posts: 376
    it's pointless trying to put pots into the ground  for the last say 2.5 months so i've accumulated a lot that are growing larger and larger and don't expect to get them planted until Autumn now.

    So to manage them:

    -pots are largely moved into shade, getting just an hour or so sunshine.
    -groupings of pots are say on trays that can hold water.  
    -larger pots that routinely dry out daily are now sat in trugs.
    -i've done lots of potting on to give a bit more space/water storage in pots.
    -watering on an evening

    i'm watering in the garden just newly planted beds, and one or two that i really want to grow faster and don't want their progress impeded.

    never again will we refresh so many new beds in spring.  autumn now looking much more sensible timing for new beds.  

    it is also a reminder i need to keep working on improving our sandy soil, which largely means leaf mold and collecting compost from local stables.  which makes me think i should be collecting more now, whilst it's bone dry and much lighter than spring....it's just so hot for that kind of donkey work.
  • raisingirlraisingirl Posts: 7,093
    Fire said:
    "Teaspoons in the heather"

    That would be a lovely title for something - a novel, poetry collection, short story.
    Mum was painter, so it would have to be a book of her quirky watercolour sketches  :)
    Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon

    “It's still magic even if you know how it's done.” 
  • josusa47josusa47 Posts: 3,530
    Fire said:
    "Teaspoons in the heather"

    That would be a lovely title for something - a novel, poetry collection, short story.
    It might have been written by the late, whimsical, Scottish poet Ivor Cutler, who produced such lines as "Gather your soup bowls to the south side of the island".  In time gone by, Sir Paul might have set it to music for the B side of "Mull of Kintyre".
  • What are "teaspoons in the heather"?
  • I don't grow heather, is that the way the leaves go?
  • hogweedhogweed Posts: 4,053
    It's because no matter how careful you are, there is always a teaspoon at the bottom of the basin, so when you chuck that water on to the flower bed, the teaspoon goes too!! 
    'Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement' - Helen Keller
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