Daily News-Record, March 5, 2022
The spring-into-summer drought of 2021 is the worst I can remember in my 45 years of living in Virginia. Let’s hope we will not experience a repeat this year, but gardeners should garden every year as if there were going to be a drought.
Water is a precious resource that is too often taken for granted. Whether you get your water from a well or out of a municipal system, it must come from rainfall that has either collected underground or behind a dam. Rainfall is always variable and we should treat it as the unknown quantity it is. Wells can run dry and reservoirs can be depleted.
With that in mind, you can reduce your demands upon the system by always avoiding unnecessary use of water. For example, lawn sprinklers should not run when rainfall is sparse. A green sward is not more important than the availability of water for drinking, cooking, bathing, etc.
Unfortunately, many people fear brown grass means dead grass and they don’t want to go through the effort of reseeding a lawn. However, the grass is not dying; it is simply going into a dormant (inactive) state. As soon as rains return, new green blades will sprout.
You can keep your lawn green longer by not cutting grass before it has grown three inches tall. Longer blades shade the ground, keeping grass roots cooler and slowing evaporation of water from the soil.
Of course, many plants don’t go dormant when there’s a lack of precipitation. Flowers, vegetables, fruiting vines, and newly planted shrubs and trees need water on a regular basis or they really will die.
Most plants are composed of 90% water so they suffer if they give off more of this vital fluid through their leaves than they take in through their roots. Savvy and conservation-minded gardeners know how to help their plants maintain constant moisture levels: They mulch.
To mulch is to place a blanket of material at the base of plants. Organic matter of any sort — seedless hay or straw, leaves, pine needles, wood chips, shredded bark, and newspapers — adds nutrients and tilth (crumbliness) to the soil as it decomposes. Use whatever is easiest for you to obtain.
Mulching reduces the evaporation of moisture, insulates the soil to reduce temperature fluctuations that could be harmful to roots, and it prevents a hard soil crust from forming. These crusts, which tend to form on the clayey soils that are prevalent in much of Virginia, inhibit water absorption and permit wasteful runoff.
Once the soil has warmed in spring and there has been a good rain, place the material as close to your plants as possible without touching the stems. Stems that remain constantly wet will rot.
Do not water unless your plants truly need it. Plants often wilt temporarily in the heat of the afternoon sun, but they should recover nicely by late evening or the next morning. If they do not perk up by morning, give them a slow deep watering.
Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People (Stackpole Books; information at www.marlenecondon.com). You can read her blog at https://InDefenseofNature.blogspot.com