Selfsufficientish.com

we've spent so much time watering - as we use water butts and watering cans. now himself fills a dustbin form the IBC water butter and wheelbarrows it to veg. still takes ages.

hoping for rain soon

my sister has lived in gironde for last 17 years and is forever tantilising me with her daily temps!

I managed with watering can alone until recently, but it's hard work and time-consuming to get enough water on the beds that way, and less than enough water does more harm than good, according to the books, as it encourages shallow rooting. The problem was that I don't have an outdoor threaded tap (I don't yet have an allotment - I grow veg. in my back garden), but then it dawned on me that the outlets for the washing-machine plumbing are threaded, so I bought a hose and attachments, and an oscillating sprinkler, unscrewed the cold pipe to the wasing machine, screwed the hose on to it, and bingo! It's not ideal, because I can only have it on full-pelt, I can't turn it down as I could with a tap, and I have to leave either the back door or the kitchen window open for the hose to pass out through, but it'll do until I can afford to get an outside tap plumbed in. Now, I just leave the sprinkler to do its thing for a few hours, then move it to a different spot. It can cover about a quarter of the garden from one position.

growingthings wrote: My other question is, is there any late crops I can be sowing to compensate for those that have been lost?

Lorna x

I'm a great believer in not watering at all if you can help it and find that, even in london, if the mulch is thick enough you don't have to. trouble is, i rarely have enough mulch to do everything.

i have been growing red amaranth for the first time this year and it has done really well and doesn't seem to mind the drought at all. you can still sow it in july if you fancy trying it... and you're quick!
i got my seed from http://www.realseeds.co.uk/cookinggreens.html

its so pretty too!

Watered the peas generously and got a good crop - peas with no water = no crop. Luckily no hose pipe ban so far down the allotment.

Well today our rain consisted of ONE measley drop. So I'm with you Oldfella