I'm more or less like Rosalind. We're on a well, so water bans or lack thereof don't really affect us (tho our neighbors sometimes have their wells run dry, and as ours is pretty shallow, we do try to conserve water in general). But I just generally don't feel right using groundwater that could go to some much more important purpose just to keep a lawn green or an inappropriate plant growing prettily. Also it takes time and energy to water
So, the only watering I do is
a) newly planted things (veggies when first planted, perennials as needed for a month or two, and shrubs and trees as needed for the first year) and
b) watering the dryest looking plants/beds deeply just a couple of times or so during a really dry summer. The problem with watering more often is that it discourages plants from sending roots downwards where they belong, so even if I
am going to water a plant, I prefer to wait until it seems on the brink of sustaining permanent damage
. Really, for my money, if it can't get roots deep enough to survive our climate, it oughtn't be growing here anyhow, no matter how pretty or tasty.
We're in a low spot on clay (except the flowers in front of the house are on very sandy soil), and don't have
too many days in the 90s F, so that certainly helps... but honestly I would be doing the same thing even if we lived in a desert on sand, I'd just be learning to
like desert sand vegetation
No matter
where you are, there will be lots of things you wish you could grow but can't, right?
Of course a veg garden would need frequent watering under those conditions, but, you know what I mean.
I spend a fair amount of effort getting the ground loosened up, adding organic material, multching, and then making sure beds don't get walked on, all of which
greatly improves the ground's ability to hold whatever rain (or rare watering) it does recieve. I only watered the tomatoes I think three times last year and they were a JUNGLE, probably 10x the production that I was getting when we first moved in and I watered regularly but the soil was completely unimproved.
Our lawn actually looks better (at least from a distance) than most in this area come August, partly because of the low-area-with-clay thing but primarily because the lawn is about half weeds and the weeds do much much better during droughts than the lawn does
Things like clover, bugle, hawkweed and that yellow vetch stuff can give a nice green effect even when the grass itself is all brown and crispy. THe trick is to have a plentitude of weeds everywhere. FOrtunately that is something I am good at, lawn-management-wise <lol>
Pat
I would be so much happier to run the water early in the morning.
