The True Nature of Sustainability@home - Myth Four

Myth Four : Water is a naturally occurring garden and household commodity.

There are only two types of water, not enough and too much. We call water the biggest single limiting factor of gardening.  I also call it lots of other things when it’s rained so hard and for so long my trees get root rot and dis-assemble before my eyes and my seedlings float on the surface of small streams. But I have strategies do deal with too much, it’s harder when it comes in the form of not enough. Not enough happens every year. You can install every water reading gadget you like in your water tanks, but nothing increases the likelihood of getting more unless of course you resort to bringing in truckloads of the chlorinated stuff to contaminate your tank with. You can go in for brief and I mean very brief approximations of the rainfall phenomena in your shower every day.  But then I’ve been caught looking at my broccoli seedlings and deciding which comes first, my personal hygiene or their green and tender lives. 

It only takes a few unwatered days of blistering sun and your garden suffers growers droop. There’s little you can do about rainlessness. You can conserve water, provide thick layers of mulch (and don’t the slugs just love that.) and a multitude of other things you spent nights up researching (please refer to  Myth  three), but in the end not enough is not enough. So while it’s generally a naturally occurring phenomena the amounts it falls in often falls short of requirements.

 Myth five Tomorrow - It doesn’t take much time. An hour or so pottering in the garden.