Droughty conditions and watering again

We don't like to water much;  we've designed our landscapes (yikes, it's now plural) to be largely self-reliant on rainfall, but a very long spell (weeks and weeks, maybe a month or more without any rain), and pushing 90°F temperatures through the end of September has even hardy natives looking wan, not to mention those from moister sites and higher elevations.

So I'm dragging the hose around, my gardening companion has gone to the mountains this weekend to water newly planted trees and shrubs in our landscape there  (he also has vegetable harvesting duties, and watering the raised beds, too).   So, we're hoping for some decent rain with the cold front that's coming in tomorrow.

In the meantime, I've managed to tidy up the perennial beds, get them ready for needed renovation, change out some containers, and plant to edit the front meadow tomorrow morning (it needs it, big time). There's a group of folks coming after a Osher Lifelong Learning Gardening for Nature program in mid-October, which somehow has become the program where 'we visit your garden.'

I like to encourage people to create gardens that welcome them home  -- ours does that, but we've gotten used to the mulch pile next to the garage (hmm), so it does create a bit of mild anxiety.  But I'm a teacher, and sharing the process is what learning is about.

Gardens are always changing, and even though we love our natural landscape, there are always shrubs to manage, and trees that don't flourish, etc. And we're ready to do the next round of editing and planting.

My vegetable beds in the Piedmont are doing well, with lots of nice fall greens (mustards, arugula, lettuce, and kale) in spite of a herbivore that keeps eating the leaves of my red cabbage and broccoli plants.

harvested garlic in early summer

I'm looking forward to planting garlic, as soon as we get some rain, and it cools off a bit more.

I caught sight of a large Eastern Cottontail rabbit this evening as I was watering, and thought, hmm.  I was blaming woodchucks creeping up from their forest den behind the brush pile, or squirrels, led to herbivory by dry weather.  Who knows?  All are possibilities.  But I'm glad enough to share a bit, at this point, although it's getting tiresome.

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Dry weather

A tremendous thunderstorm in the North Carolina mountains last night was a surprise. It wasn't in the forecast, but the rain was welcome there. June was dry in the Piedmont and mountains, and the lush spring green is starting to look crispy around the edges.

The mountains are doing better than we are in the Piedmont, however; we haven't had any rain here for about 3 weeks, with temperatures well over 90°F for some of that time. Coming down the Blue Ridge Escarpment towards home today, I was wondering how my vegetable garden had fared.

Happily, the tomato and pepper seedlings in flats in the shade were fine, thanks to a friend checking on them yesterday on a 'emergency' basis, and everything was OK, although dry. The brutal drought years of the last decade (and especially the last three years) have made me wary of planting anything that's not drought-tolerant, and able to withstand hot, dry weather without visible stress.

But, now even the deep-rooted meadow plants are looking droopy in the afternoon, especially the ones planted last year. They're in full direct sun from late morning until early evening -- a tough site, to be sure.

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A sedum garden

Sedums are one of my favorite groups of drought tolerant plants. I like to use them in window boxes and containers, where they thrive with minimal care. They also have a tremendous diversity of habits, color, and form within the large numbers of species available, although with much cultivar diversity.

I was admiring a green roof display at a mountain nursery a couple of weeks ago, and took my gardening companion back to look at some other plants (thinking that he'd enjoy the sedums, too).

They were exceptionally attractive (happily, he doesn't need much encouragement) and we set about adding a small sedum garden in the dry mulched area above the bog-in-progress.

We even went back the next day to get more to add, along with a few with some height.

We're hoping that they'll thrive with minimal care!


Our gardening assistant (perhaps I should say 'supervisor') seems to approve.

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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!

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Native perennials

I managed to get most of the native perennials in the ground today. A good friend and I put half of them in the pollinator border at the Garden on Friday; this afternoon, in spite of distractions, and wind, I put the rest of them in the front meadow.

They're all tough, and will hopefully flourish in the hot and dry conditions there.

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Ready to go?

It's been a banner year for butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa. Very deep-rooted, with somewhat fleshy, tuberous roots, it's sailed through months of minimal rain and heat to produce abundant fruits and seeds.

It's a widespread species across Eastern North America and the Midwest, occurring along roadsides, open areas, and in its native grassland sites.

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An irresistable group of plants

It started with the farmer's market this morning. I wanted to check on a type of tomato that was being sold at Thursday evening's market (of course, the tomato fellow must have been at another market this morning). But a local garden club had plants for sale from a small nursery that I hadn't heard of before, so after buying some thread-leaved coreopsis (Coreopsis verticillata), a pink-flowered form called C. rosea, lemon verbena, and dwarf thyme, I thought I'd go check out the nursery. Much to my delight, they had all sorts of things that you usually don't come across locally, so first I broke my rule about not buying big plants in small pots (because they're usually pretty pot-bound) and some of these had been subjected to less than ideal conditions (it's been so hot and dry, it's hard to keep up), and second, it's quite a subpar time to be planting perennials, in early summer with hot, dry conditions predicted.

But I added a perennial foxglove, a Mexican bush sage, several Penstemons (Husker's Red), a couple of other Penstemons that I'm not familiar with, a lovage plant, an unusual lavender, a tricolor sedum, and a dark-leaved Heuchera (to replace the unattractive lime-green one I bought by mistake last year).

Hmm, I think I had in mind that I was going to spruce up the bed outside the breakfast room window, which is looking a bit threadbare?

At least, they're all drought-tolerant and tough!

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More plants to plant

On an excursion to one of our remaining independent nurseries yesterday looking for a pot of Bolivian begonia, which had been wonderful last summer on the porch, I didn't find any, and will just have to wait until the one I ordered as a 'summer bulb' arrives. I did find a number of other things (of course!) that I thought it would be fun to try.

A large flat of Bidens in one of the greenhouses (species not given) was unusual among the normal collection of warm season annuals. Bidens is a genus in the Aster family full of tough, sometimes weedy wildflowers (common names include Tickseed, Beggar's Ticks, and Bur-Marigold), so seeing flats of something tame-looking labeled as an annual got my attention.

I had run across a reference to selections of Bidens ferulifolia a couple of weeks ago, working on a drought-tolerant plant list for our zone (7b). They supposedly flowered all summer, were attractive to bees and butterflies, and were happily drought-tolerant in containers (my kind of plant). So even though I wasn't sure what sort of Bidens were being offered up, two pots made it into my cart (I managed not to buy more, as I already had added a couple of portulaca plants, two licorice plants, and several small tomato plants), in spite of having a number of plants at home needing planting already....

Some time poking about on the web suggested that my purchases WERE a cultivar of Bidens ferulifolia, a native of the U.S. Desert Southwest and Mexico, a evergreen perennial in Zones 8-11. Which cultivar, I don't know, but I think I'll use one in the large corner hanging basket, and the other along the driveway and see how they do.

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Waterwise gardening

In this summer of extreme heat, and severe drought here in South Carolina, it's hard NOT to think about drought-tolerant plants. We have tried to establish a low-water use landscape, but that doesn't mean no water, especially with recently planted perennials, shrubs, and trees.

We've both gotten really tired of dragging the hoses around to water these young plants that we don't want to lose, but anything planted this year needs water to survive the high temperatures, hardly any rain, and too much wind conditions that we've had. Our plants would normally thrive, after establishment, on normal rainfall, but rainfall this summer has been anything but normal, and even the toughest drought-tolerant perennials have wilted in the late afternoon sun. Trees, with their much more extensive root systems, and shrubs haven't been much affected, and certainly reflect their higher drought-tolerance.

Conditions this summer have me thinking about waterwise gardening (a 'new' alternative term for xeriscaping), as we basically don't believe that putting in irrigation systems is a sustainable option. I think the term 'xeriscaping' makes people think about desert landscaping or high elevation drought-adapted western plants, but I like the term 'waterwise gardening.' Even though I know we're hardly in the low rainfall zone at an average of 50" annually, our local cities and muncipalities are encouraging voluntary water use restrictions, and some are now mandatory in a severe drought year.

Being a waterwise gardener means choosing plants that can withstand dry spells, and flourish without lots of supplemental water. Here in the SE, we can grow lots of great plants that fit that description. Clues to drought-tolerance come from native habitat (grasslands, prairies, dry woods, etc.), plant habit (deep tap roots or fibrous storage roots), leaf color and texture (gray leaves are reflective, waxy or thick leaves are water-loss resistant).

Some of my favorite 'tough plants' from this summer have been blazing star, purple coneflower, black-eyed susans, oakleaf hydrangea, Salvia species of all sorts (including the purple Salvia leucantha shown above, Vaccinium (blueberries), Rosemary, Nepeta (catmint) hybrids, garlic chives, anise-hyssop, and certainly all the native trees. Only the relatively thin-leaved tulip poplars, maples, and dogwoods have looked really stressed, where, in contrast, the oaks and hickories are looking fine.

Lush leafy landscapes and abundant lawn grasses transpire large amounts of water and often need additional water added beyond the regular rainfall amounts.

I'm looking around and seeing what in our landscape might fall in that category. Fortunately, most of the native plants (perennials, shrubs, and trees) from this part of the U.S. are well-adapted to long periods of summer drought, and have been pretty nonplussed faced with weeks and weeks of no rain and extreme heat. The exceptions are many of our favorite plants that are native to the mountains, but not all of them. There are also some of our native understory trees that have large, thin, leaves and show water deficits quickly, too.

But, I do want to have a garden that I won't worry about if we're away in the summer and am not around to do water triage. Of course, my container plantings will be on their own, too, in that case, too!

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