Watering with an Eyedropper

I remember back when it used to rain.  I distinctly recall looking at computer weather maps with angry red, orange, and even purple rain pounding all of eastern Massachusetts.  There were days when we awakened to a soft, gentle rain that soaked the soil down eight or ten inches.

But not recently.

Medfield in a drought.  A Stage 2 drought according to the U.S. Weather Monitor.  New England is 25% under its normal rainfall – 6 ½ inches short and counting – with a long term trend for more of the same.  Our town has imposed strict watering guidelines that will likely get even more draconian in August. 

Water collected from the air
conditioner goes into jugs

If we lived in an apartment or condo, we’d shrug, water the plants on our deck, and count our blessings.  If we lived in a house with a long-established garden, we’d ride out the dry spell and consider ourselves lucky.  But we don’t live in a condo and our garden is brand new – nothing in is more than a year old.  We have a dozen young trees that are just starting to establish root systems.  We have sixty or more shrubs and several hundred newly-planted perennials.  If we don’t water, they’ll die. 

Almost all of New England is dry

So, here is what we do.  Every morning at 5:30 a.m. we are dressed and out in the garden.  Our four rain barrels would hold 200 gallons of water if there had been rain to fill them, but they’ve been dry since Bastille Day.  (That storm at the end of July that the radio promised would drop two to four inches of rain went south of us.  Rhode Island got lucky.  We got sprinkles.)  So we collect the water condensate from our air conditioner.  We collect the water that we ran while the shower warmed up.  We pool the water in which we washed vegetables saved in a pail.  There are mornings when those three activities generate six or seven gallons of water.

It just hasn't rained around here.
Double-click for an enlargement.

To get the rest of the water we need, we begin filling re-purposed cat litter jugs with tap water.  One day, we water the plants in the front of the property.  The next day, we water the plants in the back.  Each tree, shrub, and perennial gets a specific allotment of water.  There is no waste.  We’ve built little berms around the plants to ensure that there is no runoff.  Betty applies the water, I refill the jugs and run them to where they’re needed next.  And ‘run’ is an accurate descriptor: I carry two, three-gallon jugs at a time, and a jug is filling while I sprint to the next drop point.

Yesterday, the radio spoke of 2-4" of
rain today.  It went south of us!

The jug-watering brigade goes on for up to two hours because we also have to water our vegetable plot two miles distant.  (There, we’re allowed to use a hose, but Betty is just as precise in her watering.)  At 7:30 or so, we line up the empty containers.  We are both covered in sweat and ready for a shower.

Where, of course, we will start collecting the water for tomorrow morning…

The Rhythm of the Rain

Between three and four inches of rain have fallen on our garden in the past 24 hours, putting the first meaningful dent in a drought that stretches back through the Winter-That-Wasn’t.  Yesterday morning, we were ten inches below ‘normal’ precipitation since January 1; today we are six or seven inches down.  I might add that there is still light mist falling as this is written.

This is the best spring bloom ever
for our cersis canadensis

But the unnatural weather of the past month – 80-degree days in mid-March followed by a long stretch of cool, dry weather – produced a rare spring treat: a prolonged period in which daffodils co-existed with the blooming of our cersis canadensis (forest pansy redbud), and Virginia bluebells are in full show mode at the same time as epimediums.  The bergenia is glorious, and so is a bright pink azalea off on a corner of the garden.  A dogwood that customarily blooms in mid-May is already bursting, as are our lilacs.

Our Virginia bluebelles typically
appear in mid-April for a few weeks

As the rain tapers off, though, the suddenly waterlogged daffodils and hyacinths will keel over.  The petals from the ornamental plum will fall and form a blanket of pink around the base of the tree.  Those bulbs that lingered beyond their normal bloom time will be gone in a matter of days.

Jeffersonia diphylla (twinleaf) makes
a brief appearance, but has lingered
this year

It has been a beautiful spring thus far, though I know the stress placed on our shrubs and perennials will cause problems this summer (unless this weekend’s storm is a harbinger of a lot more of the same).  But we hooked up the rain barrels on Friday and so captured 150 gallons of rainwater plus filled two dozen two-and-three gallon jugs. 

This is epimedium suphureum.  The
flowers seldom last longer than a week

Our nearly snow-free winter is already having other repercussions.  Ticks made it through the winter unscathed and the tiny deer tick nymphs – which have the highest prevalence of Lyme and other disease infection – are several weeks early in making their appearance.  Deer, squirrels, moles, voles and rabbits also had an easy winter, which means extra applications of repellents.

This is not intended as a rant or complaint.  If you garden, you have to expect the unexpected.  The same quirk of weather that gave New England a spectacularly beautiful March and April is going to be responsible for a set of problems down the road.  If you’re an astute gardener, you alter your plans and make allowances.  It’s as simple (or complex) as that.

Summer Rain

Eastern Massachusetts gets about 45 inches of precipitation per year.  Roughly ten inches of that falls as snow, the balance as rain.  Much of our spring rain comes from vast, drenching weather systems that sweep in from the west or up from the south and give us all-day rain ‘events’ that re-charge our ground water and ensure that May and June are brilliant with color.

Precipitation in Eastern
Massachusetts.  Double-click
on the chart to see details.

Then, as the chart at left shows, the rain slows down.  By July, we’re dependent on ‘pop-up’ thunderstorms – highly localized downpours caused by unstable air masses.  The problem is that these thunderstorms are truly hit or miss.  The next town over gets an inch of rain while you get the rumble of distant thunder.  Or, the rain may all fall in a few minutes, meaning water runs off rather than soaking into the soil.  And, this July, the rains did not come at all to Medfield. 

We do not water our lawn and never will.  We water newly planted trees, shrubs and perennials for the recommended periods.  Because they’re annuals, we water our containers and vegetable garden generously.  The primary source of water for our containers is rain barrels – three, 55-gallon drums connected to our downspouts. The secondary source is recycled water from our home.  For example, we keep buckets to capture the three gallons of water from our shower while it warms up in the morning.  We capture the water used to rinse vegetables.  Waterwise, we run a ‘green’ household.

Pop-up thunderstorms.  One town
gets drenched, another gets zilch.

It takes more than 30 gallons of water to drench our 50 containers and, during the hottest days of summer, that needed to be done every other day.  Until last week, we were holding our own despite the lack of precipitation.  Then, I noticed that one of the shrubs in the large bed in front of our property was in distress.  It got the diverted shower water.  Other shrubs and perennials quickly began showing the same distress.  We hauled water in two- and three-gallon containers to the affected plants and poured it slowly, making certain that every ounce went to the roots and none to waste.

But by Saturday evening we were facing an ethical choice.  A week hence, our gardens would be filled with visitors.  Our perennials were limp; there was simply no moisture in the soil.  There was a 70% chance of rain for Sunday but we agreed that, if we didn’t get substantial rain, we would break out of the hoses and watering wand.

Sunday morning, 11 a.m.  Oh, yeah!

Sunday morning we awoke to soft rain – the first in more than 30 days.  The rain gauge showed that four-tenths of an inch had fallen overnight.  An hour later, the rain was steadier and heavier.  By noon, the rain gauge showed more than an inch.  The weather map showed a conduit of moisture passing steadily over Medfield, fed by Atlantic Ocean moisture.  Around 4 p.m., the rain finally stopped; the rain gauge showed a total of 2.4 inches in a twelve-hour period.

This morning, it is as though the month-long dry spell never happened.  The perennials in Old Stone Bed are tall and erect.  Seedeater’s Heaven, which was prostrate a day earlier, has completely recovered.  A quick trowel check of one of the shrub beds shows that there is moisture down at least six inches.

Not every gardener is as serious about water conservation as we are, but then we have to make up for our neighbors who thoughtlessly run their lawn sprinklers despite the watering ban imposed by our town.  Ours is not some holier-than-thou attitude toward water in the garden.  Rather, it’s learning to live by the same common-sense rules that ought to apply to everyone (and what Betty tells the groups that pay her to speak on the subject).  That we have two acres doesn’t give us an exemption.  Enough said.