Summer 2023 came with a bang in late June. By that time, most of the vegetables we’d planted had matured nicely and were beginning to bear fruit. The sudden arrival of summer was annoying but not tragic. Alas, summer 2024 decided to one up its predecessor.
Gardens are contrary to the will of nature. So any success is still success one may conclude. Still, I don't like working so hard to provide an all-you-can eat salad bar to every insect, rat, bunny, virus and fungus in the land!
Oh, I don't know. When last year I collected harlequin bugs by hand and drowned them in soapy water it took a while for them to die. And they absolutely deserved it. I do realise it was deranged to go to the trouble but it pleased me and I'm not ashamed of it. Lost the broccoli they'd invaded but I had my revenge. This year, I'm going with permanganate. Whatever I spray with it doesn't die immediately but it does die, or so the tomatoes tell me. I now sound like a latent mass murderer... :D
"We were staunch believers that this is one of the decent, sensible laws, protecting our common water resources and aiming to avoid outages in the middle of summer when it’s bleeding hot and everyone needs a shower."
Instead of forcing everyone to live small, inconvenient lives, the folks running the infrastructure could arrange to provide plentiful resources. I know this runs counter to the current hair-shirt philosophy of life, but my belief in these ideas died long ago.
Build a bleedin' aquaduct or two for Grue's sake.
Anyway, rant over, sorry about that. What I really meant to say, was I replaced my "soaker hose" watering system with old style sprayers some years ago. In addition to giving better and more even coverage, and releasing me from the need to futz around with the exact placement of hoses that never did soak all that well...
Having sprayers means that I can set my irrigation system to run the Garden Station every two hours for about 2 minutes during the heat of the afternoon. This seems to cool the plants enough to compensate (mostly) for the above 100F heat we regularly "enjoy" here in central Texas.
If I'm only using part of the garden, I remove spray heads and cap off unneeded pipes. Or switch from 180 degree sprayers to 90 degree sprayers.
Perhaps not an option if you're watering from a storage tank, and certainly works more conveniently with a programmable irrigation controller...
I'm not familiar with geography in Bulgaria. Here in central Texas, we're about 600 miles from the Missouri River passing through Kansas. We should have built an aquaduct decades ago. There's an altitude drop of about 6" per mile, although not conveniently constant over distance. :-) The Missouri River often floods its banks.
A few reservoirs at this end, and at the very worst, the aquaduct could be run when the Missouri is high to fill local reservoirs.
I never had that problem with the leaves. The evaporative cooling did seem to help the tomato and pepper productivity, but, of course, without an identical garden with identical plants as a control....
That would be one long aqueduct! Probably too expensive to build, as so many things are. We do have rivers in the vicinity but in summer the flow seriously declines. Good thing we had a really rainy May to fill up the reservoirs that supply our drinking water.
It would almost certainly cost more, but at $5M per mile it would still be "only" $3 Billion and could supply much needed water to central Texas for hundreds of years.
I suspect it would end up costing much less than all the money folks spend on rain barrels, low flow toilets, restricted shower heads, etc, and the real point is it would make life better.
Gardens are contrary to the will of nature. So any success is still success one may conclude. Still, I don't like working so hard to provide an all-you-can eat salad bar to every insect, rat, bunny, virus and fungus in the land!
Agree. Any success is success. As for the insect pests (we haven't had any bigger ones yet), we've got chemical weapons, nature-friendly. :D
My only problem with chemicals is the resulting deaths are not MORE violent. Damned bugs. HATE EM!
Oh, I don't know. When last year I collected harlequin bugs by hand and drowned them in soapy water it took a while for them to die. And they absolutely deserved it. I do realise it was deranged to go to the trouble but it pleased me and I'm not ashamed of it. Lost the broccoli they'd invaded but I had my revenge. This year, I'm going with permanganate. Whatever I spray with it doesn't die immediately but it does die, or so the tomatoes tell me. I now sound like a latent mass murderer... :D
"We were staunch believers that this is one of the decent, sensible laws, protecting our common water resources and aiming to avoid outages in the middle of summer when it’s bleeding hot and everyone needs a shower."
Instead of forcing everyone to live small, inconvenient lives, the folks running the infrastructure could arrange to provide plentiful resources. I know this runs counter to the current hair-shirt philosophy of life, but my belief in these ideas died long ago.
Build a bleedin' aquaduct or two for Grue's sake.
Anyway, rant over, sorry about that. What I really meant to say, was I replaced my "soaker hose" watering system with old style sprayers some years ago. In addition to giving better and more even coverage, and releasing me from the need to futz around with the exact placement of hoses that never did soak all that well...
Having sprayers means that I can set my irrigation system to run the Garden Station every two hours for about 2 minutes during the heat of the afternoon. This seems to cool the plants enough to compensate (mostly) for the above 100F heat we regularly "enjoy" here in central Texas.
If I'm only using part of the garden, I remove spray heads and cap off unneeded pipes. Or switch from 180 degree sprayers to 90 degree sprayers.
Perhaps not an option if you're watering from a storage tank, and certainly works more conveniently with a programmable irrigation controller...
Well, there's only so much water in this part of the country, I guess, hence the law. But I can relate to what you say.
Sprinkling sounds like a great idea but wouldn't it make the leaves wet and help the sun roast them better?
I'm not familiar with geography in Bulgaria. Here in central Texas, we're about 600 miles from the Missouri River passing through Kansas. We should have built an aquaduct decades ago. There's an altitude drop of about 6" per mile, although not conveniently constant over distance. :-) The Missouri River often floods its banks.
A few reservoirs at this end, and at the very worst, the aquaduct could be run when the Missouri is high to fill local reservoirs.
I never had that problem with the leaves. The evaporative cooling did seem to help the tomato and pepper productivity, but, of course, without an identical garden with identical plants as a control....
That would be one long aqueduct! Probably too expensive to build, as so many things are. We do have rivers in the vicinity but in summer the flow seriously declines. Good thing we had a really rainy May to fill up the reservoirs that supply our drinking water.
It would almost certainly cost more, but at $5M per mile it would still be "only" $3 Billion and could supply much needed water to central Texas for hundreds of years.
I suspect it would end up costing much less than all the money folks spend on rain barrels, low flow toilets, restricted shower heads, etc, and the real point is it would make life better.
Is is common in Europe that it’s illegal to use tap water for your garden ?
I don't how it is in the rest of Europe but I expect there are restrictions there as well, at least seasonal ones.
Imagine a 100 years ago when stealing water meant carrying it in buckets from the closest water source to grow a bean.