The benefits of rain
After several years of drought (quite severe), it's been a relief (a joy, really) to be able to be away for a few days without coming home to drought-stressed plants (vegetables and containers, window boxes, and hanging baskets).
It's early in the growing season, to be sure, and we've got LOTS of hot weather ahead, so I'm still working with an array of drought tolerant species in my containers.
But I do hope that we'll have a respite from the unrelenting drought of the last decade or so, minus a year or two!
It's early in the growing season, to be sure, and we've got LOTS of hot weather ahead, so I'm still working with an array of drought tolerant species in my containers.
But I do hope that we'll have a respite from the unrelenting drought of the last decade or so, minus a year or two!
I think that using garden soil and compost in my containers has been better then fast drying container soil! What do you use? I need to get a better water collection and storage system with summer droughts likely to be on the way! gail
ReplyDeleteGail,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you're doing fine with compost and garden soil, especially if it's 'garden soil' that's sold in bags (that's normally peat and sand and a bit of perlite, as far as I've experienced). But your native garden soil is probably quite nice, too, after it's developed a bit into topsoil.
I use extra-large baskets and containers and fill them with Fafard 3B container mix (a nice coarse mixture of pine bark, peat, perlite, etc., often with moisture granules (Water Sorb, etc. sorts of things), along with organic slow-release fertilizer (Holly-Tone). It depends on what I'm planting, too. Drought-tolerant plants don't appreciate those moisture granules!
I need a better water collection system, too. Even though our drought here has eased, we always have dry spells in summer, to be sure.