Nursery notes: Memorial Day Weekend Sale!  All pottery and con-

crete statuaries and benches 20% OFF!  (excludes talavera). All metal

art including arches, trellises, planters & animals 20% OFF! Grow

your own mushrooms garden kit Reg. $24.99  1/2 OFF! The sale lasts

from Saturday to Monday. Thank you DeAnne Pearson for your

wonderful lecture last Sunday!

Lots to see at London's Chelsea Flower Show  this year - which is

celebrating its 100th anniversary: Prince Harry's tribute garden to his 

mother, creative garden sculptures...   and for the first time gnomes

are allowed.  Chelsea

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At this time of year, when summer is beginning for real, I am often

thinking of the best ways to keep all of my lovely plants alive.

As gardeners we must try our hardest to conserve as much of our

precious water for our landscapes as possible. Drip irrigation, with-

out question, is the best way to accomplish this.  

 

The traditional approach has been to use hoses and sprinklers. Then

along came the high-tech underground systems with their automatic

timers, pop-up sprinklers and rotors.All of these simply throw water

in the air in the hope that some of it might benefit the turf, flower-

beds and plants that it lands on.

 

Drip irrigation, however, is a focused technique that supplies the right

amount of water directly to the plant’s base. Plants love it, and will

show their gratitude by flourishing through these hot summer months.

To set up a drip system, connect a soft poly pipe to your water faucet,

and run the pipe along the soil surface. 

 

The next step is to punch ‘emitters’ into this pipe at the base of each

plant. Gardeners often use mulch to cover the pipe and emitters to

further conserve moisture.

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Some other benefits of drip irrigation:

1. You save water (and therefore money) since there’s no evaporative

loss to the air. It all goes directly to the plants.

2. Water is added to the soil slowly. This reduces and often eliminates

water loss due to run off.

3. Weeds don’t get watered as much.

4. Plant diseases, like powdery mildew, are kept at a minimum be-

cause foliage is kept dry.

5. Water can be tailored to individual plant needs. Water loving plants

can be given more by adding extra emitters, while xeriscape plants

have less.

6. Best of all, drip irrigation is easy to install for both existing flower

beds and vegetable gardens. Often there is no trenching and existing

automatic systems can be adapted easily.

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When we combine drip irrigation with native and adaptive plant

species, we can then all make the very best use of water… our most

precious resource. Happy Gardening everyone!