I live in California, and we're in the midst of one of the worst droughts ever. I'm old enough to remember the most recent worst drought during the '70's,when my dad did his part for water conservation by putting a brick in the toilet tank. Our governor has declared a drought emergency, halted deliveries of water to central valley farms, and asked consumers to reduce their water usage by 20%. It goes without saying that when the governor is willing to suspend water supplies to the state's largest industry (and no, it's not film making; it's agriculture), we're in dire straits, indeed.
The price of fruits and vegetables is going to go up. And Yours Truly likes homegrown tomatoes in the summer. How can I have my summer veggie garden AND reduce my water usage by 20%?
By pimpin' my water.
Black Man Not Blogging (BMNB) and I are pretty water conservative. We don't run the washer or the dishwasher without a full load. We rarely wash our cars at home. Our lawn is watered by sprinklers on a timer, and most, but not all, of our shrubs are on drip irrigation. We have low flow toilets and low flow shower heads. Although our HOA told us we could let our lawn go fallow, BMNB isn't falling for it. "They'll be the first ones to turn around and tell you that you better get your lawn green after you've let it die." He'd rather take the hit and water the lawn instead of replacing it later on.
What's a homegrown tomato lover to do?
First, you start conserving. I've put a 5 gallon bucket (You can get them cheaply at Home Depot) in my shower, and when I run the shower to warm up the shower water, the cold water goes right into the bucket. I keep the bucket in the shower for any bodily runoff. Between me and BMNB, we're averaging about 5 to 7 gallons or more a day of reclaimed water from the shower. I take it an additional step by taking "sailor showers," which I learned from my dad, who served in the Navy. As one of six kids, shower time was at a premium when I was small. My dad taught us to wet yourself up, soap yourself down, rinse yourself off, and get out, all without leaving the shower running completely during the process. As much as I love long showers with continuously running hot water, a homegrown tomato lover's gotta do what she's gotta do.
After conserving water, you start pimpin' the water you have. That reclaimed shower water? I'm using that to water the shrubs that are on drip irrigation as well as the ones that are not, like my Heirloom and Fiesta roses and my Freecycle irises (I got them off of Freecycle). So far, they're looking good. I've told BMNB to turn off the drip irrigation. Most of our shrubs are drought resistant -- sage, lavender, Nile lily, rock roses, jasmine, Shasta daisies -- and can take reduced watering. The magnolias on our lawn are a bit more temperamental, but they get watered with the lawn. We're cutting back on watering the lawn, too, but not so much that it will die.
I also reclaim any water I use to wash any laundry or CPAP equipment I wash by hand -- panty hose, delicate blouses, breathing hoses, you name it. Not only do I reclaim the water they soaked in, I rinse each item over a bucket and reclaim that water, too. I even reclaimed a tub of bath water and watered my front lawn with it.
The water that would have gone to the drip irrigated shrubs? That's the water I'm using for my veggie garden. I don't know if it's a one-for-one match, but I'm betting that it is. I've always watered my summer veggie garden by hand, using watering cans. It's easier for me to keep track of how much water I'm giving each row or type of plant.. BMNB could not get comfortable with the idea of using reclaimed water to grow the vegetables he would eat (I'm sure he thought of it as "booty water," since some of it rolled off our bodies in the shower), so I had to be creative -- pimpin' reclaimed water for use on my drip-irrigated shrubs, using the water I would have used on my shrubs to water the veggies, and cutting back my total water consumption as much as possible.
I'm sure you're asking yourself, "Does she love homegrown tomatoes that much?"
Yes, I do. I really do. Besides, if I don't grow my own vegetables this summer, who will?
Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts
In My Garden On My Birthday
My sister, the Writing Diva (escribadiva.blogspot.com), sent me a list of all the things she can't get me for my upcoming birthday that I usually ask for – world peace and the like. Black Man Not Blogging, on the other hand, keeps trying to make a big to-do of it, dangling the prospect of stays at some of my favorite B&B’s – the Hill House Inn in Mendocino, the Deer Creek Inn in Nevada City. For me, it’s just not that complicated.
I just want to spend the day in my yard.
I’m a novice gardener. I didn’t really get into gardening until about eight years ago, but I enjoy taking a vision of perennials in my head (I don’t bother with annuals or shrubs anymore) and making it a visible, tangible reality. That’s not to say I haven’t killed a few plants along the way to following my vision. But if you’re not killing plants, you’re probably not really gardening. Gardening is in part about taking chances – planting something you think you’re incapable of nurturing and seeing what happens. Sometimes you surprise yourself.
I think the seed for gardening was planted in my mind during my early childhood. Our next-door neighbor, Mr. Hawkins, had a garden that took up his entire back yard – vegetables, flowers, maybe even a fruit tree or two. No grass for him, no sirree. I just remember being allowed to roam free in his garden and water things as a four year-old, and it was all just so beautiful to me, even the corn stalks that towered over me. I didn’t know at the time that he was actually babysitting me for short stints while my mother ran errands. I just thought I was being allowed the privilege of visiting and playing in his garden.
The idea of gardening was further nurtured when I studied in Spain. You know all those photos you see of window boxes overflowing with fire engine-red geraniums perched above narrow, cobblestone-paved streets in the south of Spain? Well, they’re for real. Saw them with my own two eyes. If something as small as a window box could add that much of a visual punch of color, imagine what an entire yard could do?
It is when I lived in Mississippi that I realized that many of the plants and trees I was familiar with in California actually had a scent. Wisteria, irises, magnolias, and tulip trees all have a scent in the South; they don’t in California. Even plants that have a scent in California, jasmine and gardenias, aren’t nearly as fragrant as they are in the South. I don’t know what it is about the South, but flowers just smell better there. I wanted to re-create those scents in my own garden one day.
What really got me going was living near Denver. Denver, as most of Colorado, has a shorter growing season than California. But, oh, what a growing season it is! Once that last frost has passed, usually near the end of May, folks nearly run over each other at the Home Depot to get plants and put them in the ground. (You can always tell the novices because they mistake the first run of warm days in April as the end of the frost season and start planting, despite the fact that July is the only month where there hasn’t been snow in Denver.) The public parks, especially Washington Park, are suddenly awash in color. And the Denver Botanic Garden just puts on a veritable show. It’s as if the flowers know they only have so much time to bloom, and they get on with it in style.
BMNB’s townhome near Denver had a small patio, no back yard. I made the most of it – container gardening. I planted snapdragons, daisies, purple sage, a purple clematis vine, red coreopsis, just about anything with vibrant color. I bought patio furniture. I made outdoor candles using Mason jars, white sand, tiny sea shells, and scented votives. BMNB came to realize that the patio could be more than just a slab of concrete – it became our own little botanic garden, our own little oasis. We bought a Hibachi and grilled, or just spent time there talking at the end of the day.
I’ve since planted gardens everywhere I’ve lived – with my oldest sister (who, for some reason, can’t get past the unfortunate choice of the ubiquitous day lily, which, to me, lacks style and attracts too many bumble bees), while renting, and now, at my own home. Except for my sister’s garden, where I actually dug up all her crappy soil and replaced it (if California’s number one industry is agricultural, why is it that I’ve never lived anywhere in California that had good soil?), I’ve always gardened on the cheap – buying compost at the Dollar Tree, not paying more than $5 per plant, planting seeds and bulbs purchased from the Dollar Tree or Winco when possible. And although the results weren’t always Architectural Digest-worthy, they’ve been pleasing to me.
So now that I’m in my own house, I want to create the same visual oasis for myself as I have for other people’s property. I subscribe to the same gardening ethos as the Moors, who built the Alhambra in Spain – that a garden should look, smell, and sound good. The Alhambra has one garden that has a fountain that spills over into a tiny creek that flows through the middle of two rows of orange trees. The Moors even “tuned” the fountain so it would make a soothing, gurgling sound, and the orange trees were planted to provide the sweet scent of orange blossoms in the spring. I aim for that in my own yard, and I planted nine jasmine plants just for the scent – and to hide that dreadful back retaining wall that holds up my neighbor’s yard. Inspired by a mailbox I saw in Mississippi, I planted an Alice du Pont mandevilla (who was Alice du Pont, anyway?). The mailbox, an antiquated type sitting on a post, was enveloped in this vine with its cheery pink blooms. I’ve always wanted one.
I also transplanted some of what I call my “Lazarus plants”: Plants I brought with me in pots from our last rental that I neglected since we moved in. I might have thrown them out but for the sage advice of BMNB: "If they're green, they're not dead." Here’s hoping that my pink jasmine, bower vine, and climbing rose will rise from the dead and thrive on the new trellises I bought. On sale.
So, on my birthday, I intend to slap some Banana Boat sunblock on my arms, some Aveeno oil-free sunblock on my face, put on my torn khakis, a worn-out “Nelson Mandela” t-shirt, and some old tennis shoes, and start digging up shrubs not of my choosing (Heavenly Bamboo, anyone?) in order to plant some perennials of my choosing (English lavender, Mexican sage) and some fragrant roses under my kitchen window to go with the others I transplanted from our last rental. I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday.
NB: Just found out – Alice du Pont is poisonous. I advise doing your research in advance before planting stuff. That’s why I’m still a novice gardener.
I just want to spend the day in my yard.
I’m a novice gardener. I didn’t really get into gardening until about eight years ago, but I enjoy taking a vision of perennials in my head (I don’t bother with annuals or shrubs anymore) and making it a visible, tangible reality. That’s not to say I haven’t killed a few plants along the way to following my vision. But if you’re not killing plants, you’re probably not really gardening. Gardening is in part about taking chances – planting something you think you’re incapable of nurturing and seeing what happens. Sometimes you surprise yourself.
I think the seed for gardening was planted in my mind during my early childhood. Our next-door neighbor, Mr. Hawkins, had a garden that took up his entire back yard – vegetables, flowers, maybe even a fruit tree or two. No grass for him, no sirree. I just remember being allowed to roam free in his garden and water things as a four year-old, and it was all just so beautiful to me, even the corn stalks that towered over me. I didn’t know at the time that he was actually babysitting me for short stints while my mother ran errands. I just thought I was being allowed the privilege of visiting and playing in his garden.
The idea of gardening was further nurtured when I studied in Spain. You know all those photos you see of window boxes overflowing with fire engine-red geraniums perched above narrow, cobblestone-paved streets in the south of Spain? Well, they’re for real. Saw them with my own two eyes. If something as small as a window box could add that much of a visual punch of color, imagine what an entire yard could do?
It is when I lived in Mississippi that I realized that many of the plants and trees I was familiar with in California actually had a scent. Wisteria, irises, magnolias, and tulip trees all have a scent in the South; they don’t in California. Even plants that have a scent in California, jasmine and gardenias, aren’t nearly as fragrant as they are in the South. I don’t know what it is about the South, but flowers just smell better there. I wanted to re-create those scents in my own garden one day.
What really got me going was living near Denver. Denver, as most of Colorado, has a shorter growing season than California. But, oh, what a growing season it is! Once that last frost has passed, usually near the end of May, folks nearly run over each other at the Home Depot to get plants and put them in the ground. (You can always tell the novices because they mistake the first run of warm days in April as the end of the frost season and start planting, despite the fact that July is the only month where there hasn’t been snow in Denver.) The public parks, especially Washington Park, are suddenly awash in color. And the Denver Botanic Garden just puts on a veritable show. It’s as if the flowers know they only have so much time to bloom, and they get on with it in style.
BMNB’s townhome near Denver had a small patio, no back yard. I made the most of it – container gardening. I planted snapdragons, daisies, purple sage, a purple clematis vine, red coreopsis, just about anything with vibrant color. I bought patio furniture. I made outdoor candles using Mason jars, white sand, tiny sea shells, and scented votives. BMNB came to realize that the patio could be more than just a slab of concrete – it became our own little botanic garden, our own little oasis. We bought a Hibachi and grilled, or just spent time there talking at the end of the day.
I’ve since planted gardens everywhere I’ve lived – with my oldest sister (who, for some reason, can’t get past the unfortunate choice of the ubiquitous day lily, which, to me, lacks style and attracts too many bumble bees), while renting, and now, at my own home. Except for my sister’s garden, where I actually dug up all her crappy soil and replaced it (if California’s number one industry is agricultural, why is it that I’ve never lived anywhere in California that had good soil?), I’ve always gardened on the cheap – buying compost at the Dollar Tree, not paying more than $5 per plant, planting seeds and bulbs purchased from the Dollar Tree or Winco when possible. And although the results weren’t always Architectural Digest-worthy, they’ve been pleasing to me.
So now that I’m in my own house, I want to create the same visual oasis for myself as I have for other people’s property. I subscribe to the same gardening ethos as the Moors, who built the Alhambra in Spain – that a garden should look, smell, and sound good. The Alhambra has one garden that has a fountain that spills over into a tiny creek that flows through the middle of two rows of orange trees. The Moors even “tuned” the fountain so it would make a soothing, gurgling sound, and the orange trees were planted to provide the sweet scent of orange blossoms in the spring. I aim for that in my own yard, and I planted nine jasmine plants just for the scent – and to hide that dreadful back retaining wall that holds up my neighbor’s yard. Inspired by a mailbox I saw in Mississippi, I planted an Alice du Pont mandevilla (who was Alice du Pont, anyway?). The mailbox, an antiquated type sitting on a post, was enveloped in this vine with its cheery pink blooms. I’ve always wanted one.
I also transplanted some of what I call my “Lazarus plants”: Plants I brought with me in pots from our last rental that I neglected since we moved in. I might have thrown them out but for the sage advice of BMNB: "If they're green, they're not dead." Here’s hoping that my pink jasmine, bower vine, and climbing rose will rise from the dead and thrive on the new trellises I bought. On sale.
So, on my birthday, I intend to slap some Banana Boat sunblock on my arms, some Aveeno oil-free sunblock on my face, put on my torn khakis, a worn-out “Nelson Mandela” t-shirt, and some old tennis shoes, and start digging up shrubs not of my choosing (Heavenly Bamboo, anyone?) in order to plant some perennials of my choosing (English lavender, Mexican sage) and some fragrant roses under my kitchen window to go with the others I transplanted from our last rental. I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday.
NB: Just found out – Alice du Pont is poisonous. I advise doing your research in advance before planting stuff. That’s why I’m still a novice gardener.
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