Well, with the temperatures reaching 90-100 degrees each day for past 3 or more weeks, I guess it is time I start thinking about more drought tolerant flowers in addition to deer resistant ones. Have printed off and saved information from several websites this morning. Was out at 6 am watering flowerbeds.
Drought tolerant flowers
Drought tolerant AND heat tolerant. I've been watering but some of my stuff looks pretty sad. Except the weeds....oh boy...... so healthy and happy.
Ditto to that.
The problem is often getting heat and drought tolerant that can also survive high humidity levels...kind of the worst of all worlds, lol.
Some of the stuff that I had in Phoenix that seems to do well here, too:
Gaillardia
Coneflowers
Rubdeckia
Santolina
Iris spp.
Salvia spp. - the perennials, not the annuals.
A good resource for finding drought tolerant plants is browsing through High Country Gardens catalog. A lot of their plants won't work in the S'east, but many will if you make sure they have *very* good drainage and are in a full sun spot.
Me, I don't water unless they're newly planted or in a container, and then only rainwater. It's a waste of clean drinking water.
BTW, this is a good place to plug mulching - it saves a lot of moisture and keeps roots cool.
I hand water everything every morning...and again at night unless we have had a rain (a goood rain).
90+ degree heat? High humidity? You sure you don't all live near Atlanta? LOL It is AWFUL here. It's 10:30 and I'm getting ready to go out and water. My gardens are brand new. Gotta water. No choice. Thank goodness there are no bad restrictions any more.
I should be out there watering or pulling weeds but I am still exhausted from yesterday and the day before. We had our carpeting cleaning done yesterday and there is much prep before and yesterday too. We still have to bring some small furniture(chairs and end tables, lamps, my computer chair,etc. back inside. We tried to make it easier on the carpet cleaning man but made it harder on ourselves. He said we made it a dream job for him. He did a great job but I'm so sore this morning. It's 66 degrees now at 7:45 am. Hopefully it will stay in the 80's. Yesterday was delightful too. Tell me how the flowers manage to slow their growth in drought conditions but the weeds don't!
Another 99 degree day. Yesterday I used the soaker hose on the sunroom flowerbed which is where I have most of the plants that I wintersowed this winter. We have a water moritorium in effect due to a water main break/leak that is in another part of our county. Guess I'll be using the sprinking can on any plant that I see looks parched until that moritorium is lifted. Even more reason for planning to incorporated more dought tolerant plants in 2011.
It never is a bad idea.
The town that I live in is built on the confluence of two large rivers so water was never a problem in the past, but with about 5 years of drought condition, they have finally tried to adopt water conversation techniques for the last three years. Water meters are being installed - that should have a big effect since people's pocket books will be involved - not like the flat rate we have had and people pay no mind to what they use. I am hoping that drought tolerant plants will be the norm in all the gardens here. I am redesigning my yard to be able to water only once a week, twice only in the hottest times of the year - so the lawn is slowly disappearing.
This message was edited Jul 5, 2010 9:39 PM
Just now getting meters.... wow.
I like epimediums for tolerating heat and drought and shade.
Here are two epimediums in mid-July in an area of my yard which gets no watering,
neither hand watering or sprinkler.
They are holding up well. Each patch is 3-4 years old and filling in nicely.
This is epimedium x versicolor sulphureum.
And this is epimedium alpinum.
Sorry, neither bloom in summer (spring bloomers).
They pretty much look the same now, but flowers are completely different.
But what I mainly like about them is their ability to cover what otherwise was weedy open DRY areas.
This message was edited Jul 10, 2010 12:43 PM
Blessed with some more rain last night. It was 99 here yesterday, managed to get my Yvonne's Salvia planted. Should have been in the flowerbed weeks ago. Planted some bronze mums that I had taken cuttings of at least 6 weeks ago. Still have one to plant. It just got unbearable and the sweat was burning my eyes and I could feel my arms burning from the hot sun, so came inside. Haven't heard what today's temps will be like. Maybe if we get those 55 in. of snowfall pictures out to remind us what it was like in Jan and Feb. we won't mind the heat.