Selfsufficientish.com

Seems most of my local outlaying area is already (or soon to be) in an official drought situation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-17111982

It does feel good to have almost 4,000 litres of rainwater stored up in tanks by my veg growing section. I have no idea how long this'll last during the summer, but I'm ready to roll with it :)

We had less rainfall than that and so far this year has been very dry.

Aye, we're not exactly going short up here either..

....... nor here.
I think I ought to go into business selling the stuff.

Maybe we should devise a plan to rotate the British Isles occasionally to share out the goodies - you can certainly have some or our wind (which has just yoinked the top off our polytunnel ) and we've got plenty of rain too.

However, you can keep all the snow!

I don't think we are too far off here either - I hate it when spring is really dry, potatoes are tiny, peas don't do very well and I hate trudging along with a watering can all the time.

On the plus side though, I don't remember the last time slugs were a problem, last spring was sooooo dry I think it killed them all off, harhahrhar!

Green Aura wrote:Maybe we should devise a plan to rotate the British Isles occasionally to share out the goodies

And I think this is a sneaky ploy to then declare the whole on the British Isles as Independent Free Scotland.

I hate it as I hate spending up to 4 hours a day watering, it's so demoralising and exhausting, plus it costs a bloody fortune. I have no time to cook nice meals from the veg I'm growing as I spend all my evenings out watering! It's pointless having loads of IBCs when there is no rain to fill them.

Anyway that's why I am cutting back on the veggies this year so I can spend more time looking after my non edibles which are my first love and their soil is nowhere near as good as the veg patch which gets dug over with lots of new compost every year. You can't do that with beds with perennial plants in so they suffer terribly.

I can't remember when it last rained other than pissy drizzle. Think it was in December.

Millymollymandy wrote:Anyway that's why I am cutting back on the veggies this year so I can spend more time looking after my non edibles which are my first love and their soil is nowhere near as good as the veg patch which gets dug over with lots of new compost every year. You can't do that with beds with perennial plants in so they suffer terribly.

Can't you just spread the compost around as a mulch?

No! It just blocks any rain from getting to the soil. Mulch is not a great thing when your soil is really dry as you have to move it out of the way in order to water! It's much better dug in so I spread it about on the flower beds in the spring then when I'm weeding etc it gets dug in a bit. Then promptly all dries out anyway.

Having spent most of my life in a drought stricken country(Australia)I really do appreciate living in a green and pleasant land! I have to admit though,I am getting slightly worried by the lack of rain where I live!

Millymollymandy wrote:No! It just blocks any rain from getting to the soil. Mulch is not a great thing when your soil is really dry as you have to move it out of the way in order to water! It's much better dug in so I spread it about on the flower beds in the spring then when I'm weeding etc it gets dug in a bit. Then promptly all dries out anyway.

I tend to apply it in the autumn, and I don't dig. Mind you, dryness isn't usually an issue up here...

Having said that, I was first converted to the wonders of mulching when I was living in Australia, where moisture retention is more of an issue.

I thought one of the main reasons for mulching was water retention

It can't retain water if the water has long disappeared. It's rather a myth, yes it helps the surface moisture to not evaporate, but here the water drains out from below - so think of putting mulch on top of bathwater then taking the plug out. It doesn't help, believe me!

Like all these things, it depends very much on local conditions. I can't say I've ever gardened anywhere where water loss through drainage was an issue.