Water and Food...Well, Food, Anyway

My son asked how we were supposed to reduce our water usage 25% to meet our new rationing targets. I pointed to the lawn (pictured above) and told him that was our sacrificial lamb for the drought.

A robo call from the water company informed us that we are only allowed to water two times a week now. No word on how much we can water on those days, plus my timer doesn't go on 7 day cycles so the best I can do it set is do only go off every three days. That's what I'm doing, at 25 minutes per watering.  

That cycle also waters our roses and some potted plants that are on drippers.

Since we have a drip irrigation system on the rest of our garden, we're exempt on most water laws so we can concentrate on that while the lawn slowly goes to brown.

This week is the week for feeding.  I've been using this fertilizer but it's not as good as the Schultz fertilizer I used a few years ago but it's way better than the chicken droppings I used a couple of years ago.

The tomato seems to be happy with it but as soon as it runs out, it's back to Schultz.

Darryl
Copyright - Darryl Musick
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Keeping up Appearances

Checking into the status of the garden. First, in this era a megadroughts, how about a look at water usage? It's raining today, that's good, but we're still under rationing.

Last month's bill was $17 and change. this compared to the same time last year when we paid, well, more (the water company's website is down and I can't look up last year's bill right now). There is also a strange credit on the bill of a couple of bucks, called the "CA: LA Payment Assistance" credit, that I don't know what it's for but in water usage, we used 6,732 gallons this May and 7,480 gallons last May.

My next door neighbor, who has a large green lawn that she only waters once a week, has a bill over $180 for the same period. Yikes!

The tomatoes are busting out all over. Many fruit on our hybrid plant and cherry tomato plant. The heirloom plant is showing lots of flowers but no fruit yet.

Our chiles are doing better this year. I used this Anaheim chile in our eggs this weekend and there's some gorgeous pasilla chiles on another plant. I'll maked stuffed peppers out of them someday.

Got six ears of corn showing so far. 

The grapes are showing slight signs of smut so I hit them with some sulfur dust on Sunday.

My wife made me take the cage off of our zucchini, now it's showing signs of animal damage and I still haven't gotten any fruit. I put the cage back on, let's see how it does.

It's June. The vendor at the farmers market who sold us the dragon fruit plants told me to cut back by a third and we should see flowers by May. I did. Got lot's of new growth but no flowers or fruit yet.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

To Lawn or Not to Lawn...That is Today's Question

Before reading this, you may want to check out the posts leading up to this finale of our Earth Week series...

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

It's been portrayed as our patriotic duty. Much like Liberty Gardens or food rationing in World War II, we Californians are being told lawns are passe and we need to let them die to be good water users.

Funny thing is, we've been conserving water for years and still use a lot less than people around us. Now, partly because they couldn't be bothered to cut back, we have to cut even deeper and all eyes are on that semi-green patch in front of the house.

Part of me says, fine. Let it go.  You won't have to mow it anymore.  The other part of me says it'll be dusty, ugly, and the grass has other benefits besides looking nice and creating a soft place to step.

So what are the benefits of a lawn?  It creates habitat for bugs which feed the birds. It filters water going back to the aquifer. It keeps the dust down. It creates oxygen. It has a cooling effect on the air. It improves the value of a property.

What are the drawbacks? It takes water. In our case, about 10% of our monthly water. You have to mow it regularly. You have to do other maintenance such as feeding and de-thatching.

Now, looking at the pros and cons, what do I do?  

When a lawn goes dormant, such as in the cold of winter back east or the scorching heat of summer out here in the west, it doesn't really die and will sprout readily when fall rains come again.

I've cut back to where I still comfortably land in the water use guidelines and regulations to our state so I think I will continue until the lawn browns on its own when the summer heat gets too much for it. At that point, I will cut it off and wait for a wetter winter and fall to see how it comes back.

Sure beat mowing it every weekend this summer.

I hope you've enjoyed our Earth Week series and that it's helped you to be water-wise in your own gardening. Next time, it's back to our little patch of urban garden, our follies, and triumphs.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Saving the Planet, One Drop at a Time

It's Earth Week and we here at the Cheapskate Urban Gardener are in full agreement that we need to pull together to save our home.  Since we're in California and in a severe drought, we're going to focus on that, try to sort the myth from fact, and try to determine how we can be effective and responsible gardeners in these dry times.

We're going to start off with the big picture and work our way down to the effects on our local garden.

The headlines are scary...California has less than a year left of water; almonds are sucking the state dry; environmentalists won't let us use water because of the damage to insignificant species; farmers take 80% of the water and won't do anything to help.

But those are just scare headlines written to sell papers.  I've been going through weather statistics, state water board sites, and other sources to try to separate fact from scary headlines.

Let's make one thing clear at the start, however. Yes. This is a serious drought. No. It's not the first time this has happened to us. Yes. It's because it hasn't rained. No. It's not some politician's organized campaign to regulate our water and get more money (although there are those who 'never let a crisis go to waste' as the mayor of Chicago is famous for saying.

California actually has about two years worth of water in storage. With the state's increasingly stingy water use due to water restrictions, that time estimate can also grow.  In a real emergency, there are also decades of water storage in the ground but over pumping also causes other problems. Right now, reservoir levels are at about 40% when on a normal year in April, they'd be at around 65%.

Rain has actually increased just a bit over last year.  Fresno is an inch above last year, L.A. an inch and a half, San Francisco has doubled last year's total of 8 inches, and deserty El Centro has barely added half an inch. Since the rain year runs through June, and rain is forecast for this week, those totals will surely rise but odds are against them getting up to average, which is 11.5" for Fresno; 14.93" for L.A., and 3.44 for El Centro. San Francisco has a fighting chance to reach it's average of 20.78" though.

Not all of California's water comes from California. For very large parts of the southern end of the state, water is supplied by the Colorado River, running down from the Rockies. It's watershed snowpack is about 62% of normal right now.

Farmers currently use about 40% of the state's water, about half of the 80% many stories put out. Residential users are a little more than 10%. Most of the rest is for environmental uses, such as keeping wild and scenic rivers flowing, wetlands preservation, and habitat for various species.

One more myth...Los Angeles is a desert. No, Palm Springs, Mojave, Blythe, the Salton Sea, and Needles are the desert. Most of the Los Angeles area is naturally oak-studded grassland and is naturally green about half the year. Turning our lawns to gravel, like they do in Arizona, is not an answer but we could let them fallow for awhile in dry years.

Rain is pretty much a sure bet to return to the state, the big question is when and what do we do until then. Water is still necessary for a number of uses in this large, heavily populated state that supplies a huge chunk of food for the country and the world.

Next time, we'll explore some of those uses.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Sources: Bay Area Science Forum
California Department of Water Resources
Metropolitan Water District

The Grass Could Be Greener

This is the time of year my lawn looks its best. From about February to April is its peak. Last year, I tore up the dirt and seeded in a drought tolerant blend in November. This gave me an even longer lush looking lawn, from December to June, then the hot, drought afflicted summer months took its toll, making it hard and brown.

I still have one bag of seed left of that drought-tolerant mix (actually, not tolerant enough for our extremely hot summers). The weather forecast says we're about to get four days of free water courtesy of Mother Nature.

This is the perfect time to put that last bag in the spreader and overseed the lawn.

While the lawn is looking good, it still hosts of lot of weeds and sports a few bald spots where I dug some of those intruders up.  I take my spike tool and aerate those spots, giving the seed holes to take root in.

I go over the entire lawn twice, the bald spots get four passes with the spreader.

Seed spread, time to go in before the rain starts coming down. It may still be a drought but we should be getting at least twice as much water as last year.  

I'll be eager to see how long the lawn lasts this year.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Hit Hard by the Drought but Not Quite a Knockout

Driest year on record. That was 2014. Already in January and February, we've had just about as much rain as we had all last year. Still, we're under mandatory 20% reduction and orders not to water our lawns more than twice a week.

Luckily, there are some plants in the garden that thrived even without all that water. The plumeria, at the top, bloomed better than ever. We even had strangers sneak up and pick the flowers.

Cherry tomatoes came alive in their hanging basket.

The chiles produced way more than we could ever eat and are still going strong.

Put them together and I've got a great salsa to use as a base for making chilequiles and eggs.
 

Orchids are a lot tougher than people give them credit for...

...and, of course, you can't really kill bougainvillea.

Mr. Lincoln proves that roses are also a great drought-tolerant plant, although the deer coming down from the dry mountains found the blooms irresistible.

Darryl

Copyright 2015 - All Rights Reserved

Not All Pests Are Animals or Insects...

Well, I want to start off the post with something pretty. The Dragonfruit, which go very quickly from bloom to ripe, are ready. I picked this one and another one this weekend. This particular variety has a deep, dark, hot-pink flesh inside its fruit.

I wish it would produce more. The plants, a cacti, have little thorns that keep the animal pests off so I don't have to worry about the squirrels or deer getting to them. They also are very drought tolerant, which would make them ideal if they produced more fruit.

Speaking of pests, this morning I saw a lady come down to our back wall and snatch a large cluster of flowers from our plumeria tree. As you can see above, it grows a bit over our back wall. There's a public jogging trail on the other side.

I guess, I don't mind them taking whatever grows over to the other side, I just hope they don't harm the plants or think they can reach over the wall and take whatever they want. 

How do you feel about parts of your plants that grow beyond your property?  Is is open season on whatever grows there?

In other parts of the garden, you might have heard that California is in the worst drought of our history. The state has announced fines of up to $500 per day for visible water wasting. That's in addition to a conservation rate of 20%...we must cut back 20% on our water use.

I wonder about that last one. I've been trying to cut back for years. In fact, I qualified for a lower sewer service rate because we cut back 20% years ago. Do I now need to cut back another 20%?  What about those around me who haven't cut back at all.  Do they get to waste more water than me?

I tell you, the more I think about it the deeper the confusion is. 

Here's our lawn, which I have on a timer. You can tell it's suffering from lack of water, I'm just trying to keep it alive enough to come back when the rains do. It gets 10 minutes of water very, very early in the morning so that all the water is soaked in before the sun comes up. 

This is typical of what the lawns in our neighborhood look like right now.

A couple of people have stopped watering altogether but that brings up a lot of dust. What to do?  I think I might swing by the city hall someday and see what they will allow me to grow there instead of grass but that also might cost quite a bit.

Darryl
Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved