Sat, 29 Aug 2009
Watering restrictions and summer tree pruning
So finally it rained! It had been months since we had any significant rain, and we are having one of the hottest summers on record. The other night I got 3/4 of an inch at my house. The next day I felt like a new person! I hope there is more to come. Some of my customers didn't get any rain, though. The City of Austin and surrounding cities and the county have all enacted mandatory water restrictions, so we can really only irrigate with irrigation systems once per week. There is actually a "water police" who will give you a ticket if you are watering on the wrong day or at the wrong time. It is kind of a drag but I am glad to try to do the right thing to save water. I am a chronic over-waterer so it is good for me to have some guidelines. All of the landscapers around town are trying to gear up to take advantage of all of the business that is going to come up because so many plants died this summer. There will be alot of planting jobs. I am just going to stick with my current customers- they keep me plenty busy! The newer plants that I put in the ground in the spring will have a really hard time with just once per week watering, so I will be hand watering alot in the next few weeks. It is legal to hand water at any time. That is ok with me, standing around with the hose and listening to my MP3 player is not such a bad way to pass the time when it is over 100 degrees outside. While I am watering I am also using liquid fertilizer like fish emulsion to give the plants a late summer boost. My husband put new music on my MP3 player recently, so that has been cool. He included a band called O Death, which is really a downer, as you might expect. That is not so great to listen to when it feels like there are tons of plants dying and the heat is never going to end. But he also put a woman who calls herself St. Vincent on there and she is totally awesome. Very good gardening music. She is an indie artist who does alot of experimental rock. If you like Sleater-Kinney or Tori Amos you will probably like her, though some of her fans might cringe to hear me say that because they think she is way cooler. She's from Dallas too. Normally at this time of year I am doing tons of weeding and summer tree pruning. Because of the drought there is not much weeding which is great! I have been hand-watering so much that I am behind on tree pruning most places. But that is ok, I can do it in the winter. The trees will still be there. It is a good idea to prune small trees like crepe myrtles and wax myrtles at this time of year in Austin if their branches are hanging into walkways or scraping on the roof. Their flowers and berries can make the branches heavy, so a light pruning is good if you can do it. Save the hard pruning for winter. Keep it cool out there!
posted at: 19:21 | path: /colleen0605 | link for this entry