MAY30,2008ju§t|QVt|l7
Save the Water
for the Slip 'n' Slide
Ways to help your garden through Portland's dry summers
ith the mid-May heat wave, gardens have been
shocked out of their sleepy, cool slumber and into
blazing heat we usually associate with August. I’ve
had to drag out the hose earlier than 1 can recall.
But sadly, I’ve watched the tender new growth on
many plants shrivel up and flounder with the scorching sun. Yikes!
There are a variety of things you can do to ensure your garden is
set for Portland’s dry, warm summers. Here are a few:
• Plan for it. Get those soaker hoses or drip irrigation in now. If
you get them in early, the garden will grow up and around them, and
no one will even know there are irrigation systems in there. Both
soaker and drip irrigation deliver a slow, steady release of water,
right where you want it: at the base of the plants. And even better?
You plug and play—meaning you hook them up, turn them on and
walk away. You can even design your drip irrigation to be set on a
timer. Vacation? No problem. Your garden will still be taken care of.
An excellent option for drought-tolerant planting is Cytisus
Battandieri, also called Pineapple Broom.
And when I say plan for it, I also mean
plant for it. I’m always on the lookout for
drought-tolerant or xeriscaping plants.
This means they don’t need much, or any,
supplemental summer watering. Examples
of good choices for our area include many of the gorgeous salvias,
like Purple Rain and Black and Blue, Agastache (also called hum
mingbird mint), Lamb’s Ears and Sedum. A favorite in our garden is
Cytisus Battandieri, also called Pineapple Broom. It’s not a horrible
self-seeder like its naughty cousin, but with a lineage coming from
the Mediterranean, it’s a perfect fit for our dry summers. It needs lit
tle to no supplemental watering and is always a show-stopper. And
flowers that drip with nectar and smell like pineapple? I love it.
Are you still watering massive amounts of lawn? Time to throw
in the towel and either embrace our dormant brown lawns in the
summer or get rid of that stuff and plant a real garden. Lawns can be
the most vicious consumers of water and chemicals, and in beauti
ful, green Portland, you have so many other options. But if you’re
still hooked on the crack, I mean lawn, know this: You don’t have
to water every day. In fact, Metro’s online resources for natural gar
dening recommend watering deeply but infrequently. In fact, they
say your lawn only needs about an inch a week.
• Mulch for it. A nice, thick mulch of garden compost on top of
your beds locks in moisture and keeps the soil from drying out. Plus,
it provides the extra rewards of hiding weeds. We’ve been getting our
compost from Best Buy in Hillsboro, and its “Supreme Tillamook Com
post” has the bonus of Tillamook manure, providing plenty of good
nitrogen to our clay-based soil. Or, if you’re working on a smaller scale,
Fred Meyer carries a nice selection of bagged compost. If you heed to
pace yourself, no problem. Just know it pays off in the long run.
• Water wisely. How to water:
Don’t blast a hose over everything.
Grab a beverage of your choice
and relax your mind for a calm and
reflective time with the hose. Slow
and deep is the way to go, watering deeply to encourage roots
to go deeper into the ground, not stay up at the surface. And
watch that aim! Go for getting water to the very base of the
plants, not on the foliage. Wet leaves can breed disease, and
plants generally are getting their water intake from their roots,
so you want to get as close to those as possible. Sprinklers on a
garden? Really ineffective.
When to water: Get up early this summer and do a little morn
ing meditation as you water. It’s the best time of day to moisturize
your garden, letting the water seep in before our hottest time of the
day, which is actually 5 p.m. If you water in the middle of the day,
be prepared to lose a lot to evaporation. Evening watering might be
your only option; just try to aim for the roots, as described above.
I once told a friend I was using soaker hoses and felt so much
better not being tied to a hose every summer night. She said she’d
never consider soakers or irrigation because she found watering by
hose relaxing. I’ve laughed to myself many times about that con
versation, because I can’t imagine hand-watering a garden the size
of ours. With a little careful planning, our soaker hoses help out
considerably and the hand-watering can be kept to minimum. That
leaves more time to rest and relax and visit in the garden. Isn’t that
why we built this garden, anyway? •
L e A nn L ocher gardens like a fiend in her North Portland
garden. She can be reached at sassy gardener^ gmail.com.
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