YAY! I woke up to sunshine this morning! Such a welcome sight, now that I finally have irrigation water available. I was getting a bit upset about our lack of water. We've had some very drying winds lately, and on more than one occasion I've had to hook up the hose to the house and use domestic water. We normally have irrigation water on by now, and I was rather upset that it hadn't yet begun flowing. Well, it had. A week ago! Mr. Granny had shut off the main valve, and I didn't know it. Bryan, our son-in-law, came over yesterday and got the valve turned on (Mr. Granny said Bryan's tool was bigger and better than his........stop laughing!)
So the garden got a thorough sprinkling yesterday afternoon. It's been warmish but overcast for the past week, so with moisture and sunshine I'm hoping everything grows big time now.
The rhubarb plant hasn't had any water, other than a bit of rain, this spring. It's growing quite well, even though something unknown has been chewing holes in the leaves. I did give it a couple of shovels of composted manure, and I'll add a bit more to the bed around it soon.
Isn't it amazing what water and sunshine will do? We are getting all of winter's rain now, when it's usually spring. I'm not complaining, but it is different. How nice it must be for you to have irrigation water as a choice. My neighbor has a well, but we don't. Rainwater and greywater are my first choices, followed by begging the neighbors ; )
ReplyDeleteStefaneener, we have to pay a yearly flat rate for our irrigation water, whether we use it or not. It seems like they raise the price every year, so I get pretty excited if it's not turned on when it should be! It is nice to have unlimited water for the lawn and garden though, and know it's not going to cost us an arm and a leg like city water would.
DeleteI watered the other section of the garden today. I still have to water the rock wall garden. I'm still hoping for rain today. We have had a couple of sprinkles. Just enough to get the bricks wet. Not enough to soak in. I'm guessing we won't get much more. But I watered the garden, so that ought to make it more likely. Right?
ReplyDeleteAnd it isn't the size that counts. It is how you use it that counts. Though if you can't turn that valve on with the smaller one, maybe size does matter.
Daphne, that's what I said ;-)
DeleteI grew up on well water and still have a hard time with city water. Your rhubarb looks very happy. Mine is just now getting it's second leaf. It did a lot better last year and it was in a pot. Maybe I planted it in the wrong place....Back to the books!
ReplyDeleteChristy, this is only the second year for this rhubarb plant, but when I grew it before I always piled on the manure very early in the spring, before the shoots even broke ground. Those plants always grew huge and healthy, so I'm hoping this one does the same.
DeleteBoy we could use some rain here. We don't even have a chance of rain until next Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised that Mr Granny would admit that someone else's tool is bigger and better then his.....you know how men are :)
Robin, Mr. Granny says with age comes wisdom. He knows when to admit his shortcomings ;-)
DeleteGlad the water is back on for you. We got a toad floater of a rain storm on Wednesday evening which watered everything really well for me. Up until then it was getting pretty dry. Now if we get the sunshine today and through the weekend (as forecasted) everything should really take off.
ReplyDeleteKitsap, I assume my neighbors weren't impressed when a geyser shot out of our line this morning and probably washed their car! Who knew the entire system went on when I had it set to just one (garden) zone? We had removed a broken sprinkler yesterday, with plans to buy and replace it with a new one today. Good thing the timer had reverted to the 10 minute factory setting, rather than the 30 minutes that I use!
DeleteI see no men have been brave enough to post a comment on this thread with a comment like that. I will admit that I laughed pretty hard when I read it.
ReplyDeleteKris, you are a brave man.....evidently the lone brave man ;-)
DeleteYou gals want some of my rain? it's been raining buckets here and me with no rain barrels yet :( Granny I read somewhere that if you plant rhubarb to get more stalks you chop off all but one leaf and cover them with a big tote to cover them from the sun and the plant sends off an amazing amount of shoots ina short amount of time... I don't know if you've seen this done before but I thought it was something you might like to see if it works for you I forgot where I saw it though
ReplyDeleteGaby, that's called "forcing". Rhubarb is one of those things we like for a couple of pies, so I don't care if the harvest isn't too large! I think I still have a package in the freezer, and I only froze two of them last year :-)
DeleteI recently won the Versatile Blogging Award and was asked to nominate others who have a great blog. I read your blog all the time.
ReplyDeleteBased on your nomination you have won the Versatile Blogging Award.
http://tomatothymes.blogspot.com/2012/04/i-won-versatile-blogging-award.html
Lisa
That's one thing that I really like - not depending on city timeschedule when to get water. We do have water barrels but it's been very dry for past few weeks so barrels are empty and we're using well-water, but once we get few storm showers i'll be switching.
ReplyDeleteJenny, I love having the irrigation water to use. It's a lot less expensive than city water, and not chlorinated or treated with anything. On the other hand, we do get a lot of weed seeds in it. Anything that can get into the canal and past their screens, will come through the system. We would also be at the mercy of anything anyone wanted to dump into the canal, such as pesticides or insecticides. As far as I know, that hasn't happened, but it is a possibility.
DeleteI also should mention we only get 6-7 inches of precipitation a year, so rain barrels are of no use here!
DeleteWe're a bit short of rain as well. I'm a little concerned.
ReplyDeleteDavid, we probably won't get any more rain here until winter! Maybe a sudden summer cloudburst, but we only get 6-7" of precipitation in an entire year.
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