Post by RuthE on Jul 12, 2010 10:39:03 GMT 1
How are you keeping your gardens green this summer?
A village a couple of miles from us has been named as the driest place in the UK:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1293174/First-health-alert-summer-temperatures-set-hit-31c.html
We were supposed to get some much needed rain last night, but it missed us yet again!
My lawn is now completely brown (with some bald patches). To be honest it never really recovered from being completely waterlogged late last year followed by frozen solid for a month in the winter and I am not sure how I will manage to rescue it now as I think much of it is properly dead rather than just thirsty.
I am managing to keep containers and borders well watered without using any tap water so far. We are surrounded by outbuildings belonging to next door and we collect water from their rooves into a 1,000 litre container (we used to have a tiny waterbut but it kept overflowing in wet weather and helped to wash away our previous drive!). The container is at the front of our house, so to save myself lots of carrying I have sunk a pond pump into the bottom of it and pump water out into a hose. The hose doesn't reach the end of the garden and is quite low pressure as the garden is much higher than the front of the house, but I use it to fill watering cans and buckets. If we get a hosepipe ban I suspect I'll have to stop doing this and carry water every night. The container was, fortunately, full at the beginning of June but I don't think that it will last for more than another three weeks without significant rain so I have now reduced the watering intervals for some parts of the garden.
I really must also remember to save my washing up water every day to water trees and shrubs with too.
A village a couple of miles from us has been named as the driest place in the UK:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1293174/First-health-alert-summer-temperatures-set-hit-31c.html
We were supposed to get some much needed rain last night, but it missed us yet again!
My lawn is now completely brown (with some bald patches). To be honest it never really recovered from being completely waterlogged late last year followed by frozen solid for a month in the winter and I am not sure how I will manage to rescue it now as I think much of it is properly dead rather than just thirsty.
I am managing to keep containers and borders well watered without using any tap water so far. We are surrounded by outbuildings belonging to next door and we collect water from their rooves into a 1,000 litre container (we used to have a tiny waterbut but it kept overflowing in wet weather and helped to wash away our previous drive!). The container is at the front of our house, so to save myself lots of carrying I have sunk a pond pump into the bottom of it and pump water out into a hose. The hose doesn't reach the end of the garden and is quite low pressure as the garden is much higher than the front of the house, but I use it to fill watering cans and buckets. If we get a hosepipe ban I suspect I'll have to stop doing this and carry water every night. The container was, fortunately, full at the beginning of June but I don't think that it will last for more than another three weeks without significant rain so I have now reduced the watering intervals for some parts of the garden.
I really must also remember to save my washing up water every day to water trees and shrubs with too.