Tips for the drought

I thought I would post some tips about how to help out your thirsty plants when it's hot and dry as it's been these past few weeks. With temps 100˚ + and with very little to no rain, it's extremely hard to keep your plants and garden hydrated. No matter how much you water, the surrounding dry area just wicks it away. Most of us know that mulching and drip feed irrigation is the key to surviving the hottest and driest of summers. Leaves, grass clippings, straw, or any other natural material makes great mulch. My favorite pathway mulch consists of several layers of newspaper followed by a topping of leaves or straw. This not only helps the moisture level, but also keeps the weeds down. It's time consuming at the beginning, but saves lots of time when you need it for picking and putting up your harvest.

Tips for watering your plants:


When I'm in the kitchen preparing my veggies and fruit for freezing and canning, I keep a large plastic bowl in the sink and catch all the water that I use to clean my produce. When it's full, I dump it into a bucket to take outside and water my thirsty trees and flowers. You can use it on your garden as well as long as there's no soap in it or what is known as "grey water".


We have some older buckets that we've drilled  3 small holes in the side down near the bottom. It causes a slower "leak" of water that is similar to a drip feed hose at a much cheaper price. I frequently use these on my trees or small shrubs and can use the water that came from my kitchen tip up above. If you don't have access to buckets you can also use soda bottles, water jugs, or those big vinegar jugs that you buy for making your pickles.


If you can afford a rain barrel or two, you could catch the rain water run off or you could use buckets.We keep a tier of buckets under our garden shed roof drip line to catch any rain run off. When we are lucky to get a heavy rain that fills the buckets up, we snap the lids on to keep the mosquitoes from laying their eggs and becoming a nuisance later on. We then use a large can with holes punched in the bottom for dipping the water out and distributing it where it needs to go. Plastic water jugs will work too. Just cut the top off, leave the handle on and punch some holes in the bottom.