I left you at the end of my last blog post with a cliff hanger. I showed a picture of four Rain Bird valves with combination DIG filter/pressure regulators and hoses hanging off the bottom. Bet you were sitting on the edge of your chairs – lounge chairs in the garden with mojitos in hand, I hope – waiting […]
irrigation
Irrigation overload
I am sorry if this is TMI but there are some pretty cool things happening in Wild Suburbia with regard to irrigation. As always, I am making these changes to keep native and nonnative plants (especially trees) healthy, while using water efficiently. And I want to do this when we are home and away. We […]
Irrigation Basics – Controllers
June is irrigation month at Wild Suburbia. Here in Southern California, cool, wet weather is ending and it is likely we will not have any measurable rain for the next six months. This is the time of year that I check the tubes and emitters of the drip systems for leaks. I set off each station of […]
Garden care while you travel (Part 2)
The garden prep for our summer absence has been paying off. Yesterday my daughter took me on a virtual garden tour on Facetime. Things are looking good! The native sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) are amazing, reaching 6-7 ft. tall. And the tomato plants have held up well through the heat wave with temperatures in excess of […]
Garden care while you travel (Part 1)
One of the reasons that I wanted to change my traditional landscape to one with native plants was the hope that a natural garden would require less water and maintenance, thereby freeing us to travel without garden anxiety. This, however, did not turn out as expected. A traditional lawn-centric yard in southern California – unlike […]
More drip irrigation
A bit over a month ago I set up drip for the tomato plants. They have been doing great on 15 minutes of drip, every other day. There are two emitters per plant, 1g per minute. So that’s about 1/2 gallon per plant per watering session. When I installed it, I set the timer for 2x per […]
Irritation – Irrigation
Only one letter off and not sure which word is best for this post. Nevertheless, I got it done. Today I finally set up a drip irrigation system for my tomatoes using an Orbit hose faucet timer. In this front yard veggie garden there are six tomato plants (Early Girl, Better Boy, San Diego, Sun Gold), one […]
Make every drop count
The big news continues to be the ongoing drought in California, which is interesting since we rarely get any rain from April through November. Once we got half way through January we started feeling uncomfortable and things did not improve in February and March. The snow pack is at about 1% of average for this […]
Driving east
Did you ever feel like getting in the car and just driving east? You know, leaving the errands behind and crossing the whole country? Maybe it is the extreme heat we have been experiencing. Maybe it is the pull of my family, my daughter, son, sister, brother, in-laws, nieces, nephews… they are all back east. […]
Working with clay soil
There is much debate about the best way to garden with clay soil. Growing native plants is very different than cycling through annual vegetables and herbs, and so recommendations for edible gardens usually do not apply to natives. The best approach to native plant gardening with clay soil, as long as weeds or other plants […]