We are Xeriscaping a huge overwhelming part of my yard but it must be this way atleast initially so what I want to know is in raised beds or in ground , I assume you use a drip system or bubblers??????? on timers but for how often and how long. In containers how do you water them enough and how often. I killed a Cistis Spanish broom this year by watering it in a container about 2 x`s a week. I don`t know if it would have made a difference if it was in a raised bed or in ground either , do you?
Watering systems for a brand new, just setting up xerigarden
Unfortunately there's no one answer on how often to water--rule of thumb which I'm sure you already know is that containers are going to dry up faster than garden beds so the same plant in a container will need to be watered more often than if it were in a garden bed (raised or not). But the amt of water you need is going to vary depending on how hot it is outside, how fast your soil drains, and also the type of plant. While plants are getting established, you don't want to let them dry out too much, so I would stick your finger in the ground a few inches and see if it feels moist, if it does then don't water but if it feels dry then you should. If you are growing xeriscape plants that are native to your area, once they're established then you shouldn't have to water them much at all, maybe a deep soaking every month or so (in theory they could get by on rainfall alone except maybe in a year with really unusual weather, but most plants will perform better if you do give them a bit of supplemental water occasionally, and if you're growing stuff that's not native to your area, then they may need more supplemental water). Container plants are always going to need to be watered regardless of how well established they are because they can't send their roots down deep in the ground to tap into where the soil stays moist. As far as your Cytisus, without more info it's hard to say what happened to it--watering 2x a week if it was really hot and the container was in full sun is more likely to have been too little rather than too much, but it's also possible if it was in a container baking in the sun that the roots got fried, in that case no amount of water would have saved it. Or maybe it was rootbound, rootbound plants will need to be watered more frequently because there's not enough soil to hold moisture. Or maybe it was something else entirely!
Thanks I`m glad you cleared that up for me so I`m not confused. lol
Watering is tricky unfortunately! If it was easy, then we'd all have perfect gardens! I've learned what most of my plants need, mostly through trial and error, I've lost some to underwatering and some to overwatering, but I always try to buy small plants so I'm not losing a ton of money if I'm unsuccessful with something. If it's a plant I really like then I'll try again and change the conditions I was growing it in, or in many cases I've decided it's just too much trouble and I fill the hole it left with a plant that I know will be successful! Are there any garden clubs in your area, or do you have any neighbors with gorgeous gardens who you could get advice from on plants and watering? Someone who gardens in the same climate as you might be able to give you better guidance around how often to water since they have personal experience to draw on. If you lived by me and you grew similar types of plants, then I could tell you how often I watered and how well it worked, but your climate is very different!
I have said it before but I don`t know if I told you that I am the one with the beautiful garden, only it is at my old house where my X still lives. It is about 15 minutes from here in the same zone but in a tract. Here I have vacant land all around so advanced tunneling is here and our water well has massive calcium and other problems. It is wierd here and NOONE has a nice lawn or garden on my street. The houses in back have some nice ones so it gives me some hope.
If you're growing the same or similar plants as you were at your last place, and if it is basically the same climate which it sounds like it should be, then you should be able to set up a similar watering schedule to what you had before, maybe just minor modifications if you have more/less sun. Of course there's the issue of the water hardness etc to deal with and since I've always had city water I don't know how to help you on that! You could maybe try collecting rainwater from your roof this winter and use that as much as possible instead of the well water. (I hope your ex appreciates the wonderful garden you left behind! If not I say you just sneak back there at night and grab all your favorite plants!)
Trust me I have, I have taken seeds, virginia creepers and I am going to ask him if I can take the scabs off his bulbs that I planted because there are a lot. The watering would be different to some degree though because I had a cottage style English garden with not too many xeriscape plants.
If you are planning to use alot of native California plants, then microsprinklers are the way to go. I got this advice from Las Pilitas Nursery. Microsprinkling mimics the rainfall. Drip can kill the natives. I don't know exactly why, but I'll tell you this. I planted cofeeberries, ceanothus and native salvias during the horrible heat in July and August here. They are thriving. You can overwater. Once established, alot of the natives don't need water. They thrive on nature. Check out the Las Pilitas website. They are very knowledgeable. If you want to know what I planted and what the plants need, let me know.
hmm, that explains a few things to me as I killed a coffeeberry and severalvarieties of broom with infrequent watering but drip or hose.
Once they're established, many CA natives can be killed if you water them much at all during the summer--when you have warm + wet, they tend to get fungal infections. They can handle cold + wet in the winter because the fungus needs warmth to grow, but in the summer when the soil is warm, water is a bad thing!
hmmm thanks
Here in this desert, if we over head water , leaves burn, even misting it may burn leaves. I am getting estimates on drips, so I need to really see what is up with this las pilates thing. Never did it yet.
What time of day do you water? If you do it in the evening then the leaves will be dry before the sun beats down on them, or even doing it very early in the morning they should have a chance to dry off before the sun gets too hot.
Well it is a new area with few plants yet and they are not planted but my regular plants, get fungus and rot if you water in the evenings here and I wasn`t able to do real early watering before because of work and manual watering. Now I am starting a big area with xeri plants and it will be attached to the system that will have some drought tollerant lawn grass and some roses to, not in the same area but on the same timers, so the guy needs to put it on a different antisyphon for each one`s different needs. I just took a big hit in the winter with several of my xeriscape tried and trues, freezing and having troubles coming back. suggestions?
I'm surprised you're having trouble with fungus--I used to water in the evening all the time before I had the sprinklers up and running at my old house and never had any trouble, and I figured your climate would be even less humid than mine so everything should dry out quick enough. What I would probably try then once you get the sprinklers in is set the timers to water at 4 or 5 AM (once I had my sprinklers up and running that's what I did), the early morning sun won't burn your plants and by the time you get to mid-morning or so all the leaves should be dry.
Also, I know you probably don't want to wait to put your new plants in, but CA natives for sure and probably many other xeriscape plants will do better if you plant them in the fall, then they have cooler weather and the winter rains to get established, otherwise if you plant them now you'll be nursing them along all summer, they'll need much more care than they would otherwise and you'll have a higher percent that don't make it through the summer. I can never resist buying stuff all through the year and I've gotten to the point where I have reasonable success with spring and even summer plantings, but they take 10 times more effort than things I plant in the fall and I still lose significantly more of them than I do of the fall planted things.
No you are probably right I`ve done it before and it is so stressful on me and the plants. I`ll probably be going to school or working then too and won`t have the time for all that crap. I lost several last year planting now. I have The area with the roses and sod I can contend with but I have some plants being given to me by someone at the RU so I will have to try to figure that out. thanks. Do you have that watering mist system?
I actually had pretty good luck keeping things in containers over the summer last year--I moved into the house in June but wasn't getting the landscaping and beds done until the fall so I couldn't plant anything in the ground even if I wanted to, but of course I kept finding plants I wanted at the nursery! So I think by the time I could actually start planting in November, I had about 400 plants in containers sitting around. I had a part to mostly shady area, so I kept them there rather than in a sunnier area and I watered them every few days or so (every day during our massive heat wave) and I only lost a few. If you've got an area where you can keep pots like that, I found it was less time-consuming and stressful and I had a better survival rate than I would have if I had planted them in the ground at an inappropriate time of year and had to nurse them along. I was really nervous at first doing it that way because I wasn't sure how all the stuff would hold up in the containers, I was afraid I would get to the fall and have all the beds ready and have nothing but a bunch of dead plants to show for it, but I was amazed at how well everything did, I think out of about 400 plants I lost maybe 2 or 3, and if I'd planted those same 400 in the garden in the summer I probably would have lost 50 or so at least. The only problem I had was with everything in close quarters I ended up with a nasty spider mite infestation that spread to a lot of plants before I caught it, I ended up saving everything but that did take a lot of work (although I suppose that could have still happened if they were planted in the ground!)
As far as my watering system--at the old house I had microsprinklers for everything, and now at the new house I have drip in most of the front yard and I'm going to be putting in microsprinklers in back (right now I'm doing it with the hose), and then for my CA natives garden on the side of the garage I'm not doing any irrigation system (I planted them all in the fall/winter, and I figure I'll water them with the hose on occasion for the first summer and maybe a little in the second year, and then I'll leave them alone). I did the drip in the front yard because I thought it would look better not having sprinklers sticking up, plus since I won't want to install new drip tubing around every single new plant I buy, it'll discourage me from sticking random plants in there and messing up the nice design (I had a landscape designer plan the front). But in the back where I did the design myself, I'm doing the microsprinklers to give myself more freedom to move/add/change things, plus the plants are more xeric than the front yard so they will probably like the sprinklers better than the drip.
Do you have the hose micro sprinklers. I have those but they don`t look all that great. I have been using them to keep my seeds damp that I planted in the ground. My dh will happily deflect a lot of plant buying till fall, because we spent a lot on this side already and still have to pay for the sprinklers and sod so that will not be an issue as much for him. I have some low water use plants like phontinia and az cypress, 4winged salt bushes italion cypress and rock roses in containers but I must be watering them too often, plus two big pines, the evergreen cypresses and pines are stating to get brown needles and the photinia is yellowing. I put h2o2 on them to try to help but it is very hard to get use to desert plants that don`t need water daily or weekly. They are in containers and it has been 70 to 80 for a month except for our last few windy cold days????????
I'm not sure what you mean by hose microsprinklers? I have the ones where you start with 1/2 inch tubing and run it around the garden, then attach sprinklers off that main line every so often with 1/4 inch tubing, the sprinklers themselves are about a foot tall (you can get them in different heights though). They don't look great which is why I didn't put them in the front yard, but I change plantings too much in the backyard to go with anything else. And once things grow a bit you don't notice the sprinklers too much.
For your plants that are yellowing or turning brown--I bet it is too much water, 70-80 isn't really that hot (although it feels that way to us after the cold winter!) We've had similar temps lately and I caught myself watering my containers much more often than they probably needed it. I've gotten to the point where if I pick up the container I can tell by the weight whether it needs water or not, so that's usually the test I do rather than sticking my finger in the soil. If you get a heat wave where it's over 100 then you can water much more frequently, but at cooler temps you do need to be a little bit careful.
Oh I know the yellowing ones are too much but the Allepo pines that look like needles turning brown here and there, what do you think that is? I planted them in the ground with the bottoms cut out and wire over the bottom for gophers and sunk them in the ground but I am not sure if they need more water like a container would or if they like it dry still. Do you know? Micro sprinklers i was talking about were the little hoses with a million tiny holes that spray a fine stream of waterm the hose is flat.
Sorry, I don't know much about pines and things like that--I did have a little Aleppo pine that I got as a Christmas tree one year and I kept it in a pot for a year or two after that and it did the same thing, needles turned brown and dropped off so eventually I pitched it. You might go over on Trees & Shrubs and see if someone over there has any ideas, they know a lot more than I do about trees like that.
My sprinklers aren't at all like the microsprinklers you're talking about--mine are just like drip irrigation, but instead of going to a little dripper at the end, the 1/4 in tubing goes to a little sprinkler, each one is about the size of a pencil and can water over a diameter of maybe 10 feet or so.
I am thinking about that too.I am looking at simple drip(AGRIFIM by NDS) I was told it will water a 10' area between two lines. What do you have?
I don't know what brand mine is--I bought all the pieces from Orchard Supply Hardware and Home Depot, they have bins full of drip irrigation parts but I didn't notice what brand it was. I think the controller might be Toro but I'm not positive, it was already here when I moved in (the previous owner had a lawn with the larger pop-up sprinklers, I kept the controller for the system but replaced the pop up sprinklers with drip).
I had that for a few areas at my old house.
I am going to see what is available. I have the "leaky pipe" system now which I really don't like.
Why does your drip system prevent you from changing your landscape?
It doesn't prevent me from changing my landscape, but with drip you have to put drippers around each individual plant. Since I'm a lazy gardener, knowing that not only do I have to dig a hole for it and plant it, but I also have to take the time to install drippers around the new plant, it'll discourage me from planting something there unless I really, really want it. Versus in the backyard where I'm going to have the microsprinklers, those cover a given area so I don't have to redo them if I put new plants in, they'll be covered by the sprinklers that are already there so all I've got to do is dig a hole.
As long as what I do can go on a timer with a tleast a week or two variable for water, I don`t care about unsightly hoses dragging around or attachments to my system IN Back,(which for me is a side yard maily that is like a back yard for most).