Mulching to save precious water

my special pumpkins, which I am growing for the seeds, not the flesh

I've mentioned in the past that we had an earthquake, and as a result, we are only allowed to water three days a week, on designated days, depending which side of the street you live on. The rules are that you are only allowed to water with a hand-held hose, no sprinklers or irrigation systems. Which is fine, as I don't have a sprinkler or irrigation system. (In the past though, I have set my hose onto "spray" and propped it up and left it.

Now I have two chairs strategically positioned in the garden, where I sit and carry out my watering duties. Sometimes I have the dog on my knee and other times my 17 year old daughter sits in the garden to keep me company and have a daily catch-up.

mulch around one of my tomatoes

So a friend of mine dropped around a couple of wool fadges of straw for me to use as mulch.

On my assigned watering day, I held the hose and weeded the garden at the same time. I even washed the soil off the roots of the weeds I had just pulled out. The ground got very nice and deeply wet. Then I soaked some straw and distributed well around the plants. I actually think it looks quite attractive, and it keeps the weeds down too.

[In the old days I would create my own mulch by raking up bags and bags of leaves from public parks. I would then bring them home, pile them on a garden and soak and soak and soak them with water. Then I'd cover them with black plastic. If it rained I would run out and take the black plastic off so they could get even more soaked. Occasionally I would get in with the fork and turn the pile. You need a lot of leaves, so I would keep adding to it and watering it, then eventually I would bag it, soak it again and by mid summer it would be the best mulch ever. But last autumn, leaf-gathering time, I wasn't here because we ran away to Wellington after the quakes and stayed there for nearly 7 months. However, next autumn hopefully I'll remember to do a post on mulching.]

I used to prop the hose up on the bean frame to water, now I do it by hand

And it's given my life a different pace - no longer do I rush out to put the hose on "sprinkle" flow propped up somewhere, now I take my time watering the garden.

the corn and brassicas surrounded by mulch

It's slow-living at its finest: (not that my life is part of the rat-race hustle and bustle), smelling the roses, and keeping an eye on the pumpkins (but that is another blog post).

Summertime, and the living is easy.