Still no rain here in E-Sussex, and to make matters worse our mains water has been down since monday morning due to 'demand', for the fourth time in three years.
Short heavy shower here in Berkshire on Sunday, only lasted 10 minutes, so I'm relying quite a lot on my sprinkler, an hour on the lawn and beds every couple of days.
Just spotted this chat so thank you as by responding I have reminded myself to water the Hydrangeas in the front as I didn’t in last year’s hot spell and the flowers died.
My water butts ran out a couple of weeks ago so it’s been tap water since. I always do my patio pots throughout Summer unless torrential rain but this crept to a couple of my small borders and select plants the last couple of weeks and this last week or so I’ve put the hose on most borders and near trees. I never water my grass - it can do or die and always comes back.
I only water the vegetables everything else has to survive on it's own. Well except for two trees that were planted last year.
We've had the longest dry spell in 28 years so far here. DR which is our equivalent to the BBC has this little graphic on it's main page
The first one says drought index this is pretty useless since it measures how much water we need to get back to normal but maxes out at 10cm we're way over that by now.
The second is councils where fires and bbq's etc are forbidden. the third is how many days that drought index has been over 9 this year (average 8 days per year) and the last one is the chance of meaningful rain in the next 5 days.
The ban on fires doesn't sound much but we're 5 days off midsummer which is a big festival with a huge fire where they burn a witch on (basically the same as Bonfire night) and that's going to be ruined for most.
It's not as bad as it looks on paper as we also had the wettest March in over 50 years and groundwater is high so while there's no shortage of water, there is a shortage of pumping capacity, so some areas have times when you can't water the garden.
We had torrential rain and thunder and lightning on Monday the 12th, it nearly refilled my 220l water butt from my small shed roof. I can’t remember the last time it rained though. At one point it was raining so hard I couldn’t see the end of my road 10 meters away.
The village is surrounded by clay hills that were dry and hard so acted like concrete, this resulted in the main road and many properties and businesses being knee deep in water. This all happened in only 45 minutes ☹️.
Last Sunday's forecast rain never showed up . It's forecast to be a bit cooler tomorrow (good!) with a reasonable chance of some rain over the next week. Hope it happens this time. Perhaps I'll go outside with a bucket and sponge in a bit and give the car a wash (it's filthy from being parked under a tree earlier today) - that might appease the rain gods.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
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The village is surrounded by clay hills that were dry and hard so acted like concrete, this resulted in the main road and many properties and businesses being knee deep in water. This all happened in only 45 minutes ☹️.
Failure is always an option.
I ♥ my garden.