Rhizo, Please tell me more about the booster pump. Our city water pressure is very low and it takes so-o-o long to water all my containers. I have well over 100 including my tropicals which are outside for the summer. Some of my large pots contain a 6 foot tree plus small vine or shrub plus groundcover...I love to play with textures and form with hardy plants like we all do with our mixed containers of annuals, but that means a really crowded thirsty root system. Just now I'm having to water every day, (98 degrees F for the last 2 days), but only my container plants. The heat really bothers me so I go out at sunup...even so the past couple of mornings have still been in low 70's...just doesn't cool down much overnight. Found a great lightweight aluminum and plastic wand this spring at Lowe's which has about six settings...from gentle bubbling to really fierce hard stream. Plus you can adjust the head from straight on to straight down or sideways. Really helps get down to roots of a bushy plant particularly like Erythrina which is full of vicious prickles. LOL There's a small gadget on handle which you use to keep water flowing or shut off completely. Less than $10 as well as I remember...seems better quality than the one I'd been using. josh

My soil isn't very good. Very sandy loam with lots of rocks. Drains very fast. Can compact to concrete like hardness (I know this only too well from my project to replace the front lawn with drought tolerant plants--oh my aching back!). Low fertility which may explain why rugosas like it so much. Just yesterday I moved 1 rose and planted 5 others. All holes drained well, but in one I had the hose turned on full blast using a watering wand, and the hole wouldn't fill up--the water was draining as fast as I put it in! I try to put into practice for my roses some of what I've learned in classes at the local botanic garden. Group plants together with similar water needs. Also plant in plant communities--the concept is the plants help each other in some way, whether it is by nourishing the soil with nitrogen-fixing capabilities, giving natural mulch from leaves, or providing shade--especially for roots but sometimes from above to block the worst of summer heat for those plants that need some protection. Not long after I planted Wild Edric, I gave him a friend in the form of a heat and sun loving drought tolerant salvia from South Africa called Salvia namaensis. This salvia is very bushy and grows fairly fast. It provides WE's roots with shade for much of the day. Needs zero fertilizer and very little water yet blooms most of the year. How much of a difference this has made for Wild Edric I don't know, but neither plant seems to require much water and they both look great. I have been experimenting with putting various other low water plants, especially California natives adjacent to my roses. And many do get their roots shaded by various neighbors. Sometimes I use drought tolerant grasses such as Bouteloua gracilis and others that also provide food for wildlife and snacks for my dogs. Sort of mutually beneficial gardening with a minimum of intervention needed on my part, kind of mini ecosystems. I have lots of bees, birds, and butterflies in my garden as they can find food and shelter there year round. A nitrogen fixer that you might like is Olneya Tesota (Desert Ironwood). It has lavender sweet pea like flowers and is a nurse plant in desert areas. Can go for periods without much water or handles moderate garden watering just fine (but frequent summer water will kill it). Very slow growing however. Melissa Here is a link that might be useful: Olneya Tesota, Desert Ironwood

I don't water on a schedule of any sort. I just water the plants when they look dry. We have all kinds of soil on our property and some of it retains water much longer than the soil in other areas, so that some of it needs water more often and other areas need water much less often. The age of the plants has a lot to do with how often a plant needs water too. Plants that have been in the ground for three full years or longer are generally much more well-established than younger plants and go a lot longer in between waterings. In the veggie garden, every raised bed drains differently because the soil at one end of the garden has more sand and drains more quickly, while soil at the other end has a lot more clay and drains more slowly. So, I just watch the beds and water the plants in any given bed when they look like they need it. I keep my beds heavily mulched and only water with a hand held hose, soaker hoses or drip irrigation. I don't like using overhead irrigation via sprinklers because of the evaporation rate, and because wet foliage is prone to diseases. At the lower end of the garden, for example, tomato plants transplanted into a raised bed in early April are very well established in soil that is well amended but still has a heavy clay content. They also are very heavily-mulched. They get deep watering once every 5 to 7 days when no rain is falling at this time of year. By contrast, at the upper end of the garden, I just put in a row of melons, a row of okra and two rows of bush lima beans (all from transplants) when I dug potatoes this weekend. They are in a bed with a lot more sand mixed in with the clay, so right now they are getting watered every day until they have established and are putting out new growth. After that, as they grow and become more well-established, I'll be able to water less often, especially after they're tall enough that I can pile up heaps of mulch which, right now, would bury the small plants. All our trees and shrubs are well-established, so they and the lawn get watered once every couple of weeks. Back when I first planted them years ago, I probably watered them about once or twice a week depending on how dry it was. The bermuda grass lawn gets water only if it gets it "accidentally" when I am watering the shrub and tree beds or the perennial beds. I hate the bermuda grass and deliberately withhold water from it hoping it will die. So far it hasn't. If grass fires start happening in our neighborhood and I've let the bermda grass go dormant and turn brown (which is occurring right now), I'll start watering it again to green it up. We have soaker hoses on the ground around our foundation and water the foundation area religiously to avoid having the dense red clay soil crack and make the foundation crack along with it. I'd rather have a higher water bill every month than have to pay for expensive foundation repair. May was very nice. We had almost 6" of rain and hardly had to water at all. Our water bill was like a mid-winter water bill. June is a completely different story. Like Carol, I have to water containers every day, so I planted a lot fewer containers this year than usual because I was expecting drought and didn't want to have to water containers endlessly. Right now the container-grown tomatoes are happy with once-a-day watering, but if it gets much hotter, they'll be needing it twice a day. If this heat wave doesn't break soon, I'm going to start putting shadecloth up over the tomatoes. It sure seems early to do that, but it is so hot here. If you look at the Mesonet soil moisture levels, our county looks great, but I think the moisture sensors must be malfunctioning. I dug potatoes all weekend, so I dug down about 6 to 8 inches below grade level in those beds, and the soil was dry, dry, dry. From looking at the mesonet soil moisture charts, you'd think the soil was nice and moist, which it absolutely is not. I spent minimal time in the garden early this morning, planting a row of red sunflowers and watering the news transplants, and pulling a few weeds. Then, I ran errands, cleaned house and waited for the internet service company service reps to come check our wireless antenna. (They replaced a wire and I'm hoping that will put a halt to our recent internet service issues.) It is so hot that today seemed like a good day to be doing "inside chores". Tomorrow I hope to get outside early and spend two or three hours harvesting, weeding and adding another layer of mulch to some of the beds. Because we had good rainfall in May, I haven't had to water a whole lot yet, but as the soil dries up and our rain chances seem very slim, I expect I'll be watering more and more. In hot, dry summers I am very careful to avoid over-feeding and over-watering because the last thing I want is plants with tons of lush growth that demand lots and lots of water to keep them looking good. A lot of the gardeners here in Love County stop watering at the end of June amd just let their veggie gardens die. It is an economic decision where they compare what they're spending watering versus what they are harvesting and decide whether they are harvesting enough to make the watering worthwhile. I have done that during years with Extreme or Exceptional dought,but if we're only Abnormally Dry or in Moderate Drought, I tend to get good enough production that the watering is worthwhile to me. Dawn

These are tropical succulent plants, folks - by that nature, and if it's warm and even moderately sunny, wouldn't they want to grow? I'm watering mine about once every two weeks. Of course, they're in a moderately loose soil. The Sans That Many People Dislike (you know, the S. trifasciata variegata) is watered about once a month, and it's growing. I haven't taken a picture lately of the exponential growth I seem to be experiencing on the stolons of S. 'Ed Eby', but I saw them the other day and they're growing by leaps and bounds. Definite growth in the winter on it and lots of it. My question - it's in a squeezed pot and for it to grow better, it needs to be repotted. I'm thinking now's not the best time, but as long as I keep it dry for a week afterward, there's no problem with repotting it now, is there? Thanks for allowing me this tagalong question.