Garden Centre

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Gardening in a heatwave

It’s been ten days since we had a drop of rain in my part of Sussex, and with the daytime temperatures officially classed as ‘heatwave’, the garden is suffering. Not because there is a hosepipe ban this year (or not yet, anyway, there’s still time!) but because it’s almost impossible for an environmentally friendly gardener to lavish the amount of water necessary to keep a British garden looking at its best at this time of year. I simply can’t justify running the hose night after night when I know what the environmental (and economic) cost will be.

The first thing that I’ve neglected is the lawn. To be honest, were it not for the fact that the dogs like to sit on it, and OH likes it, I would remove the lawn altogether, it’s a drain on resources – not just water but also the regular mowing and aerating and fertilising it requires also use electricity and our energy, and chemicals. But an established lawn usually comes back, and I’m giving it ‘benign’ neglect by emptying my (cooled) washing up water onto it at the end of the day, which has always been enough to keep it alive, if not green and lovely, through the hottest, driest summer.

Next there’s the question of what absolutely must be watered – salad crops for a start and trees that are still not well established, because the former will not grow without water and the latter may die if their roots dry out. For the trees I water at night and have used the municipal tree approach of sinking flexible pipe a foot into the ground near the young trees and pouring water down it. It can actually be counter-productive to water the trunk and leaves on a young tree in hot weather, as the leaves can scorch and the bark can soften leaving it more open to predator attack.

Finally, I’ve picked out the plants which will cope without water and I’m simply ignoring them – they are plants with deep taproots that will reach water in the subsoil, grey foliaged plants, especially those with hairs or filaments on the leaves, as both greyness and hairiness help the plant trap and conserve moisture from the air, and succulents which store their own water against times of drought.

Labels: garden drought, garden heatwave, lawn

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:51 AM

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