Sunday, July 31, 2011

Sprinkling

My garden is burning up. It's been so hot and so dry and so sunny that the plants are just . . . crispy. There are no cucumbers or cantaloupes on the vines, despite a lot of flowering. The pole beans have grown and grown like Jack's beanstalk, but they're not even producing any flowers to indicate actual beans anytime soon. The Chioggia pumpkin plants are the saddest-looking vines ever, in a constant, dispiriting state of wilting. The corn is almost ready to be harvested and the ears are the smallest I've ever seen. The blackberries just shriveled up before all the berries were ready to be harvested, and the green beans have pretty much just given up entirely.

It's been depressing.

Watering has always been a problem in our garden. There was never enough water for the house, much less for the vast, thirsty garden. But now we do have enough water for the house, thanks to A. and his lake pump. So perhaps there might be a way to get some of that water to the garden?

Sure there is. But only if you're clever enough to figure out how to run a regular garden hose off a one-inch plastic pump hose, and then fit a sprinkler head onto a garden hose that has no actual screw-on part. Luckily for me, A. is that clever.

Yesterday he manipulated various hoses and couplings to put together a sprinkler in the garden that runs off the lake pump. He started the pump around 5:30 p.m. and it ran until 8:30 p.m., when it ran out of gas. We moved the sprinkler several times, in an attempt to reach all corners of our huge garden. Some of the farthest reaches didn't get watered in those three hours, so we'll have to do it again tonight.

It's not a perfect solution--only actual rain is a perfect solution, but that's not looking likely anytime soon--but it is SO NICE to be able to water the garden without struggling with a huge, heavy plastic hose that washes away soil, crushes plants, and waters me almost as much as the ground.

It may be too late to save some of the plants in the garden, but I'm hoping we can salvage some things at least. With the aid of our miraculous sprinkler, courtesy of my miraculous husband.

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5 comments:

  1. AnonymousJuly 31, 2011 at 7:44 AM

    Wish we could send some of our rain your way. We are still getting buckets! Mary in MN

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  2. AnonymousJuly 31, 2011 at 7:48 AM

    We are dry here as well...we get a little sprinkle once in a while but not enough to make a difference. The back yard is like cement. Congrats on your watering system.

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  3. Domestic DilettanteJuly 31, 2011 at 8:06 AM

    We've been so blessed. The first two months I lived in Missouri, there was only one day it DIDN'T rain. Since July 1, we've had rain at least every week. Our lawn and surrounding acreage is nearly tropical in its lushness. Too bad I didn't get here early enough to plant to a garden. Then I could have killed it instead of lack of precipitation.

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  4. DaisyJuly 31, 2011 at 2:14 PM

    Rain barrels? If you're really in a drought, they'd be empty already. I love mine, though. This is the first year in 4 that I've used house water to water the garden. Other years it's been enough to have the rain barrels.

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  5. AnonymousJuly 31, 2011 at 4:05 PM

    We get frost approx the end of September. We have replanted cucumbers(pickling cucumbers take a lot less time to get done), squash, bush beans to get a late harvest up till frost.
    The first crops are really petering out by then, if not before.
    Here it is also time to plant turnips for a fall/winter crop.
    Hopefully you will have better weather for the fall crops of cabbage,broccoli,cauliflower, brussel sprouts, chard, radishes,kale and the like. You have lots of gardening to do yet.

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