I'm going to give it a couple more weeks before I drag out the sprinkler and the hose. I'm in the SF Valley. All but one of my natives are established so I'm trying not to baby them. Tough love. I water the one new plant I have (Catalina Currant) every two weeks.

Yes on the birds.

Some of our plants are behaving like this is early spring. I'm hoping we won't get a sudden cold snap and nip their buds!

I've been walking around checking the pots and hand-watering the new plants I expected to be irrigated by lots of rain by now. :-(

On the bright side, I got some planting done yesterday and today... late this year but I had several other things going on while the weather was too hot, and now it's cooler and just right for planting. Now, rain, come on!

We had a warm spell last January too. I sure hope this year continues to be like last year!
Renee

Yes, I'm sadly watering, too. I prepped everything for winter, but it hasn't arrived. No water anywhere to be seen. Just sunshine. Blessing or a curse? Depends on one's perspective, I guess.

No, just once a week. Nothing is growing that much, doesn't need much water.

Praying for rain.

I just added a drip system and I thought in the winter I would not need to run it, but there is so little rain. While it is true there is less day light hours, so I only run the drip system once a week, in the summer I would run it twice a week. I still have to water little plants that are not covered by the drip and the trees in front of the house. I am working almost as hard watering as I do in the summer.

I'm not watering often, but I am deeply out front. I feel like I'm risking the loss of many of the perennials otherwise, like the sages and lavateras. I have no timed irrigation and let them alone all Fall long, which seemed a good idea when it was raining in Oct, but after 2 dry months, the cu. feet of irrigation is definitely adding up now, along with keeping the backyard greens and roots going.

Up here in the SF Bay Area, the midday hours have been warm enough for short sleeved shirts, but mornings, late afternoons and evenings are very cold. This greatly slows down growth rates so I have watered twice - once a month in both Nov and December.

Both waterings were about half the amount I'd normally run through the soaker hoses in summer.

The new plants I put in seem to need watering only once every 7-10 days, again probably due to the chilly evenings. Even the container plantings are okay with once a week in this weather.

When we planned the garden installation back in 2002, I tried to make it as water conserving as possible. I have 15 cottage garden beds totalling 2100+ sq. ft., several of which live completely on runoff since we live halfway up a moderately steep hillside.

Our temps tend to stay moderate even in summer and we're on the edge of the fog belt which helps too. Even in summer I only water once every 10-14 days, depending on temps. Soaker hoses, mulching, replacing the adobe clay with purchased compost, and grouping plants with similar water needs together means the garden uses around $15-20/month of the water bill, almost all of which is during the summer. So if I have to water a few times in winter, it's not a big deal except for dragging around the hoses to connect them up to the soakers.

i finally had to water too. i decided to do some late plantings in early november as an experiment - pixie cabbage, broccoli, carrots and lettuce mixes, so i had to.

this weather is really getting my garden mixed up. it's like spring here in my little valley hamlet (but also right on the bay). it's quite cold at night and mornings, but just gorgeous mid day - it was 71 degrees two days ago!

a few of my alstroemeria that are in the ground are trying to shoot up bloomers (as i call them). and one of my beloved hydrangea, which was all pruned up and ready for winter, is blooming now!! the way things are going, i may not need to start anything indoors!

angela :)

I've been being very, very frugal with my water this year in hopes of trying to make up for the high water bills in the summer, so I'm finding out just how much drought some of my plants can take. I have a large swath of Pride of Madeiras (echium) that are very well established and super drought tolerant and without receiving rain for the last 5-6 weeks, even those are looking stressed. I didn't think the small amount of rain that we received last night and this a.m. would help, but they've perked back up. We're to maybe get some more small amounts of rain this coming weekend, but our weather dude last night made vague statements about big changes coming this next month and more rain, so hopefully we'll get a boatload then...lol..