I would love to mulch our whole front yard, but the stuff gets in the dogs coats, and makes a halacious mess. So, we settled for sand, which I don't at all mind, and doesn't mess the dogs up. There's still some grass coming up through it, but less and less all the time. And water can settle through it.

Dodger's hair is more the wire type, he has more issues with the oak leaves sticking than the mulch thankfully

The local rare fruit growers is having a meeting next Saturday on keeping fruit trees alive during the drought. Might have some good ideas for roses too

Keep your ears peeled. The Historic Rose Garden in the Sacramento City has reduced their water use with no damage to the roses. That's something I want Anita to write about, for me.

Last year we changed the back half of the garden from spray to drip and I removed about 25% of my roses. This year we are going to do the front. Drip doesn't use all that much less water, but all the water you use goes into the soil, and does not evaporate in the air. Once a week deep watering for the thirstier plants, and once every two weeks for established climbers, teas, and the like. I may try to stretch that out to every eight days and every three weeks with supplemental hand watering of vulnerable young plants. And no, I didn't buy any new roses this year. I have even stopped buying trees.

Fruit trees that need no watering in my garden include figs, mulberries, pomegranates, established citrus, and established apricots. Grapes don't need much water, either. I was told once by a winemaker that a lot of growers water way more than they need to so they can increase volume. If they water less, they produce smaller but more intensely flavor grapes. It is the same theory as dry farming tomatoes. And yes, that does mean more expensive wine. My six apples are on MM111 so I'm going to let them get bigger so they'll have a deeper root system to seek out water. I took out apple #tree 7. I didn't love the flavor and I begrudged the water.

I'm with you Paula. It's not that we can't have gardens -- even rose gardens -- but we MUST garden smarter.

I may resent the people who are not asked to conserve -- not to mention those who say "I'm rich. I'll pay the fines." But I can only account for myself.

And I've heard that same thing about growing wine grapes.

One of these days, I want a fig tree.

Jeri, that first picture of your garden is beautiful. So are the doggies, who seem quite happy sitting on the soft sand.

We have no lawn and I've reduced the number of roses over the last year. I think it's going to be learn as you go. I hope there will be an initial period without fines over some months so we can learn where to cut for the greatest effect.

What gets me, is here we are all looking to reduce the few drops we use and then you see locals like this Oprah. Look at all that lawn and check out the fire hydrant style fountain. Does the fountain evaporate as much water in a day as we use in a month?

I feel for you all! Our water restrictions were finally lifted in suburban Melbourne in December 2012 with certain permanent conditions such as set times for watering systems, no washing down driveways or pavements( unless there is some sort of hazard) and using trigger nozzles for all hosing. Most of us had stopped watering lawns long before restrictions came in so there are many pebble gardens and a few with artificial turf. My lawn is cracked earth at present because I am concentrating on getting the garden beds back in shape ( and trying to convince DH that the garden beds could be wider with a central paved area and a nice smallish tree). I refuse to consider plastic grass!!! I understand how you feel about 'Water - Wallies'. We had them too, but they received their just fines. Most of us used grey water, rinse water and had buckets in the shower to collect water as the shower water warmed. As we were no longer permitted to top up our pools I also bucketed water from ours, with no harm to the garden, once the chlorine had burnt off. All my established Teas, China's and quite a few hybrids survived quite well in a semi-dormant state and even flowered after the few showers we received, but I lost a lot of newer plantings and most of my potted roses as they needed more water than I could supply to keep them alive.I am now more careful of the types of plants I use as well; lots of Limonium, salvias & agastache, plus the red and white centranthus that seed themselves everywhere.

ozmelodye, it was very interesting to read about your experiences since we now seem to be headed down that same road. Since I have quite a few new and semi-new roses I hope to get them well-hydrated before we hear from our local water company what exactly they plan to do. Obviously show-place gardens will be few and far between except for people who will pay the fines and not care that they're water hogs. Perhaps if they made a few days in prison a part of the punishment it would be more effective in deterring people. The rest of us will just have to do the best we can to have a garden that we can bear to look at. I hope the agribusiness will have similarly strict rules since they are the main users of water here.

Yes, Kippy -- that just frosts me. I know the wealthy will pay the fines and go their merry way. :-(

I forgot to mention that repeat offenders had their water supply supply restricted to household use only and those allowances were pretty meagre at that!

That's interesting!
Because, we are already hearing from people who say that they will just pay the fine. And I think that will happen, too.
But what I wonder is -- who "polices" this. Who makes sure that the water supply of offenders is restricted? Because I know that my rather small Mutual Water Company hasn't the resources (or the will, I suspect) to enforce the rules.

While I have no idea about the water used in the link for Oprah's place, some in Montecito who have had their unlimited wealth of water restricted, have opted to buy water pumped from a local ranches well that is draining our (Goleta Water District) ground water. And that frosts me because I doubt those people are going to be paying the district for using all the water and our rates will go up so their lawns can stay green

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . .

And yet fracking is still ongoing, which uses huge amounts of water and leaves it unusable for anything else. Water is already more precious than oil or gas, so what on earth are the powers that be thinking? If I dwell on these things very much I go crazy.

Here, published two days ago, are the tiers assigned to specific water districts in California: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/docs/emergency_regulations/urban_water_supplier_tiers.pdf

Interesting to see how much each water district uses and how much actually conserved last year. For many districts, this is a "hall of shame" list and downright inconceivable in many instances. Livermore, I am proud to say, though assigned to the 25% reduction tier (because we are in the mid-range of gallons used per day), actually conserved 31% last year (the California Water Service half of town I am in; the other half saved 27%) compared to 2013. So, essentially, we just have to keep doing what we were doing. Thirty percent was about what I did personally last year and everything survived, if not exactly in lush, green condition.

catspa - thanks so much for that link! I love numbers, and that chart explains clearly what the news folks have been unable to explain clearly in the news reports I have read lately - they just took the per capita water use over a recent period, and the districts using the least amount of water per capita (many of which are poor areas such as East Palo Alto, where there is no outside irrigation to speak of at all), have to cut back 10%, moving up to a mandatory 35% cutback in some amazingly water using districts. So, the average comes out to 25% - that is a much more rational way to do it than I would have guessed the state bureaucrats would have come up with. The numbers confirm what we have always suspected - most, but not all, of the districts using hundreds and hundreds (not kidding - look at the numbers!) of gallons per capita per day are in the Southern half of the state. Of course, normally that part of the state gets less rain than the Northern half, but not enough difference to explain the HUGE difference in water use.

Jackie

My heart goes out to all living things in California. Florida has been through serious droughts but nothing like what you folks are experiencing.

I live in a drought-prone area that has enacted permanent water restrictions, and it just burns me up to see people watering the road for hours as they water their grass with sprinklers. It's illegal, wasteful and costly. Water is extremely expensive here, and even a small green lawn can cost around $200/month in water.

Here's how my garden deals with the water issue: no grass, gravel pathways, gardens surrounded by large rocks to keep water around the root zones of plants. There is a mulch of leaves surrounding all the plants, including the roses. DH and I dismantled the inefficient, leaky irrigation system that the previous owner had installed, and only water by hose.

Since I started heavily mulching the roses with leaves and not using fertilizer, my roses have improved so much that it's astonishing. Each rose has its own circle of large rocks around it, its "watering well", and I stuff that well full of leaves. I realize this might not work for everyone because of different climates and soils, but it might be worth a try.

Our veggie gardens are lined with plastic or in plastic wading pools. We also have veggies in large pots that have very limited or no drainage. This really cuts down on the amount of water needed, but produces a risk of flooding if it rains. (Yeah, we still get rain here! Too much in some weeks, not nearly enough in others.) If the garden becomes flooded, we drain it by removing part of the surround or by putting a sand bridge from the garden to the soil outside the garden. This wicks the excess water out.

I suppose that roses could be grown in pots with no drainage holes, but care would have to be exercised to avoid accidental over-watering.

And I have to whole-heartedly agree with floridarosez9- fracking our water supply is insane.

I've been doing something similar to avalon and our water usage has dropped quite a bit since 2013, but our small community as a whole has a very good record of water usage, I'm happy to say. Having roses in wells filled with leaves and mulch of some kind is really beneficial, and watering only those areas rather than a garden section at a time not only saves water but helps the roses. I found that spraying water everywhere over a certain planted area resulted in water barely penetrating the mulch and ground whereas spot-watering the roses that had soil built up around them with mulch in the middle allowed the water to go deeper rather than just spreading wide on the surface. It's really the same concept as drip watering except that it's done with a hose. We have ordered and received the components for drip watering certain areas just to save time and we'll see how well that works.

Fracking and allowing more housing tracts to be built should be outlawed in California as far as I'm concerned. We live in a house that was built in 1980 and so did not add to the water usage, and actually decreased it since the people who lived here before were five in number and we're only two, and they had grass everywhere which we promptly removed.

Well, OUR water use has been cut 30+% from 2013 levels (and we were already beginning to conserve in 2013). But it sure grates, to see water wasted all around us.

I don't know if we will make it 30%. But we had already started with mulch and drip. I discovered one section that is very dry and I am going to need to give it a minor soaking but pretty much the rest is going to have to wait a week for their next turn

Jeri ...

You said, "I may resent the people who are not asked to conserve"

I am not going to be required to reduce my water usage.

I just read in our weekly paper that our water district is not going to require that we reduce our water usage unless it is mandated when they get an official document from the State. We have more than enough water for the District's customers, but the State may take a one-size-fits-all approach to water restriction and require us to cut our usage.

Of course, our lake is less than half full because they've already pulled water out to go down south and it won't be replenished because there is no snow pack in the Trinity Alps so that we can release water to maintain the health of the salmon.

I'd be a very unhappy camper if we were required to conserve water when we already have enough water for our needs.

We got significant rain this year so I know I won't have the same drought impact in my garden that I had last summer because the soil down deep has received enough water that it won't act like a sump pump and pull any water I use in the garden straight down.

Last year I had to water my trees, but I don't think that will be an issue this year, so I know I will be using less water. I also changed my mulch material last year because my normal mulch of shredded leaves did not help maintain moisture around my plants.

This is my chance to get my roses healthy again. All of them, even tho' I did water them, showed water stress going into winter. I am just glad we had a mild winter and they were not subject to our usual cold temps.

I may even wash my car this year. We don't have car washes up here that can recycle water, so it's not looking all that good.

The biggest and most effective way for Trinity County to conserve water would be to increase law enforcement to get rid of the illegal marijuana grows in the forest. Talk about a thirsty crop .... arggghhhh. The illegal diversion of water for those grows uses as much water as a new housing development !

Lyn

Lyn -- Surely you realize I wasn't talking about your situation -- which is different from much of California's.

I AM talking about Industrial areas who are not asked. And Fracking operations, which are wrong on so many levels. And also, those who are asked, but ignore that, and plan on just paying the fines, because they can AFFORD to hog this limited resource.

Kippy -- Methinks there's going to be a big demand for mulch!

I sometimes wonder where all that mulch is coming from. I hope it's not being pirated from forests.

I think it comes from lumberyards.

So I was listening to the radio and it seems all that Arrowhead water that is being pumped is being done on an expired permit....LONG expired. Thanks Nestle. Nestle's response was something along the "it is not hurting anything......." Water news

Ingrid, around here mulch, other than the kind people buy at Home Depot, comes from the green waste that is collected. Depending on the municipality, it may be rather fresh (aka weed city) or more composted. If I was in the city of Santa Barbara proper, I can ask for 2 free loads a year. The trash hauler will come and drop off a load right in my driveway. These loads are "Fresh" and I ground but not really cooked. In the county or city of Goleta, I have to pay for the delivery. The biggest truck load is $80 if I remember right. It comes from the transfer station where it has been ground, put in a massive pile and cooked a limited amount of time. They also stock a pile that you can drive up and fill your trash cans free of charge. The county has some curbside free waste and some that the various tree companies dump there when they do not have a free space to drop, it can grow weeds, some unusual mushrooms and have some trash but it is not as bad as the free stuff. That I would want to leave in a pile to cook a bit. It cooks due to the heat it generates

Most of my mulch has come from me contacting tree trimming companies and offering a free space to drop. They drive right up, back in their chipper truck and suddenly you have a massive pile of water saving mulch. No forests were chipped just to make mulch.

Considering the piles of stuff the De-Barker leaves behind on my guys portable lumber mill, I am going to guess that most of the bagged stuff is really a by product of the lumber milling industry. The bark has dirt that dulls the mills blades so it is removed prior to milling usually

Sorry to keep adding to the thread in separate replies.

Today was the local rare fruit growers water conservation meeting in Santa Barbara. They had three speakers that covered a few things besides grey water that I thought we could all benefit from in rose care. One was the use of berms and swales; for the grey water use, retaining rain water run off and in general irrigation of our plants. By creating a berm around the drip line (outer edge of the leaf canopy) basically a large circle where the trunk of the plant is higher than the outer edge so the trunk does not rot but the water remains under the plant to soak in. This could be added by a layer of compost topped with mulch to soak up and hold the water like a sponge. For those using drip the system would be under the mulch to limit evaporation. There was also the thought that with in this berm, a tube could be dug out deeper and filled with mulch/compost to act as a reservoir and place for roots to seek out nutrients and moisture . There was also the thought that a 1" pvc 12-18" pipe could be driven in to the ground with a drip system emitter dropping in to the tube for deeper roots. (For fruit trees the feeder roots are usually 6 to 24" deep) And there was the thought that one could create a berm with rocks (think softball sized) that would would help hold the soil and create some moisture just like one would see when you have a cold glass of water in a warm room (condensation) Keeping rain water run off on your property was also encouraged by use of downspouts that drain to swales 5 feet and further from the foundation (they need to slope 1/4" per foot so water runs way toward the swale. And also to make sure you have a drain point on a rainwater swale should we get a massive downpour you do not back water up in to your home or in to a neighbors) One person mentioned that they were able to order a downspout extension that was 5 feet long and sturdy enough to walk on and easy to add to the yard using a "Hula Hoe" to create a trench to place the extension in.

There was a couple of thoughts about making sure you pulled weeds to not take from the plants water and the idea of using them as green mulch. Also to put your potted plants under bigger plants so you can use your water 2x, once when you water the pot and again when it runs out of the pot and on to the bigger plant.

Anyway, it was an interesting meeting that rose growers can take some advice from as well.

My personal note, my "trailer park" area berm/swale was soaking wet on Friday when I went to plant a couple of small natives I had picked up at the Botanic garden sale. Wet wet. No wonder the teas in the best part of the berm/swale are doing so well. We had less than 1/4" of rain on Tuesday I don't think much of that could have run off, I think it was more that it has been amended and collected the winters rainfall.

I have been following this interesting thread. However, the right side of the posts are cut off. Anyone else notice that and how do you get them back? I am seeing this thread jump even as a type? Is this just another wierd thing on my computer? I am still having trouble with the cursor jumping around. Especially if I hit the space button hard.

Mustbnuts, the words cut off on the right is something that has happened the past several days or so and seems to be an annoying problem that Houzz is creating or having. If you "zoom out" (under "View" options) you can see the whole post, albeit in smaller type. As for the jumping around, others have complained about it, but I haven't had that problem, so I can't say.

I had to remove the "stylish" formating to see it

Jeri ...

Sorry to be so long to getting back to you. Long days outside have left me too pooped to even think, much less write.

I do know your comment wasn't addressed to me or people living in my part of the state.

I am seriously unhappy with the Drought Executive Order because it is only a band aide and doesn't really do much to solve the water problems in California.
I am just afraid those restrictions will apply to everyone in the whole state.

Lyn

Did anyone see the LA Times article Wrong way to think about water?

Lyn -- it looks as though water restrictions are being applied by City or at least region. Which I think is a good thing. Kippy, I skimmed through that this morning, and probably didn't spend enough time on it. But I have to admit that I clearly have not understood the issue of Senior/Riparian, as vs. Junior water rights.
And why are some people still not on water meters?

Not sure what is going to happen. However, I have been evaluating my garden as though I had to reduce it by half. If not this year, then next year. I am considering abandoning my two recent expansion beds (Pine Tree Garden and Olive Tree Garden) and pulling the best roses from them into beds closer to the house. Being younger, those roses are still small and movable. The Terrace Garden could be converted to all succulents. I'd move the rose I like best out of it (Rosette Delizy) into one of the more frequently watered beds and sacrifice the other roses there. Those frequently watered beds will go from weekly watering to every 10 days, and the every 10 day beds to every 2 weeks. The every 2 week areas will go to every 3 weeks. Right now I have about 100 roses. I'm thinking I could maintain 50 roses with shower water buckets and monthly drip irrigation. Get rid of duplicates except where I have done mass plantings. The natives trees and shrubs I planted outside the fence will be on their own two years earlier than I had planned. We did get near normal rainfall in my immediate area, so they ought to be okay this year at least.

I'm with you, Paula.

All we are doing now is removing a few things that we don't really care about. In fact, we're replacing some of those with things we DO care about.

If the drought continues, and more water cuts come, we will do more. For the present, well, we have cut a lot already -- and I'm really annoyed that they have 2,000 new homes/business properties under construction here.

I walked around today and identified 30 roses that I intend to remove altogether. I'll give them away if I can, but many of them are too big to dig up and move. We just have too much ground being watered. I intend to close down the Pine Tree Garden since it has the worst soil and move my favorite roses from it into spaces closer to the house. Of course those are all teas and tea noisettes to they will get huge. I'm not sure I can fit all the ones I want, but will do what I can.

If we get good rainfall at some time in the future I will plant that area in natives that can get by on natural rainfall after a year or two. Right now I don't have the resources to water baby plants of any sort.

We'll get through this somehow. But I'm going to have to take down the "Hundred Roses" sign. It won't be true much longer.

Rosefolly

I feel much more in control in this situation with having 51 roses instead of the approximately 95 I had at one time. Most of them are planted where they receive some degree of afternoon shade, especially the newer roses, since when I planted them I could see where all this was heading. It's possible I'll have to sacrifice the ones that get afternoon sun. These are the ones that get water from the large bowl I keep in the kitchen sink. It's amazing how much water is gathered just from routinely washing one's hands during the day or giving a quick rinse to coffee cups and water glasses that are used over and over. We have no water restrictions yet but I'm restricting myself because water has become such a precious commodity.

Kippy, thanks for letting me know that mulch is probably a byproduct of the lumber industry. What you say makes perfect sense.

I just came from rainy cool ( spring bluebonnet and antique rose flush ) Texas and when I came home to this drought I just felt cranky even though my flush is still going on. I pretty much decided to remove the roses that need extra water to bloom and the big bushes that spring bloom only I am going to dig up and keep a small portion going in a pot until the drought is over so I dont have to water a big shrub. All in all, it's a rotten situation thinking over whats going to be removed. Looking down from the plane on palm springs and all the lawns between Arizona and LAX on the way home put me in a sour mood.

I regret the necessity, but I am dealing with it. This is not a tragedy. None of the roses I am planning to remove are so rare that I will endanger their survival by removing them.

Ingrid, I agree with what you said about feeling more in control. I took out 25 roses last year and expect to take out another 30 this year. That cuts the roses I grow by more than a third and makes the garden more manageable. I'll bet that by next winter at pruning time, I will actually be glad I did this.

Can I make a couple of suggestions? Rather than outright removing the roses that you do not plan on keeping, that instead offer cuttings to people who can root and donate to future rose sales. And then track and share just how those bushes handle no watering. Maybe we can use the drought to find out if some roses are tougher than others and can stay relatively dormant during the dry season. They may not bloom or look great, but I think it would be valuable information for all on how rose handle the drought.

Kitty, not sure which spring bloomers you have, but I found I had not put the big Felicite Perpetue on the drip system when in September she started loosing leaves. I still have not put her on it, am going to leave her off since she made it last year, is really growing like mad and she is happily blooming away. I am very curious to see if once bloomers are really the way to go in droughts for the future.

My other thought, is that "we"-the entire state and maybe region need to look at water use on the bigger level. I know local governments can only do so much locally, but there needs to be some time of way for them to work together. For example, the local water district plans on paying the local avo growers to "stump" their trees to reduce water use. (Guessing a grower said they wanted to and if the district will pay....) But why not put that money toward compensating the SOD growers to stop producing until the drought is over or lessened. And to stop selling grass seed in the box stores so people quit starting new lawns for now. That seems much wiser than stopping food production.

About removing the roses, Kippy, the ones I chose are those that, even though being watered, could not seem to thrive without the usual winter rains that were mostly absent for a few years. To me that seems like a good test, and if they still look bad even when the cooler weather sets in then I know they're not going to do well for anyone else here either. Beside that, almost no one I know grows roses except the occasional few modern ones, and they seem to have no interest in the older varieties. By the way, I forgot to mention that the water-saving measures you passed on to us from your meeting are very interesting and worth looking at again. Thanks for going to the trouble to detail all that for us.

Actually I have already contacted someone to offer the more moveable roses I'm not keeping, and cuttings of the rest that are too large. And I am going to leave Rosa moschata in place to see how it does. Who knows? It might survive without any irrigation. And I have no other place large enough for it.

Long term when the rains come back, I intend to plant ceanothus and manzanitas where the Pine Tree roses are now. They will not mind the low quality of the soil in that area. And where the Olive Tree garden is now, I plan to plant a Quercus douglasii, the native Blue Oak, and maybe a Prunus ilicifolia, the native holly-leaf cherry. No point in doing so now, because even drought tolerant natives need to be watered when they are babies.

Rosefolly, I hope you don't get the blasted pine bark beetle up there. Last week the city started cutting down my favorite grove of redwoods. All dead as dead can be due to the drought and the ravages of that beetle. The week before it was the beautiful tall pine I enjoyed from my desk. One month happy, next brown. Once they take the dead ones out back, the hawks will have no where to land on the hillside. My friends wind screen of cypress...all dead. There is an incredible pine at the end of moms street. I sure hope that one is spared. I was just noticing how between the drought, the aggressive power line clearing and pine bark beetle, the sky line looks so low and open.

..a couple of interesting articles about water usage in California, although you might already have read all this...
Almonds a scapegoat

10 things to know

I liked that first article. And I especially like the quote "waste is always water used by other people". The second one is interesting, too. There genuinely is a drought, and we do have to do something about it, but a lot of people have leapt upon this issue to make power plays. They are manipulating us and and manipulating the facts. That makes me angry.

On my drive to Sacramento this weekend I noticed the almonds and other trees....all on drip. I did notice some ground crops being watered over head but those I think need that type of water for several reasons.

And then there was the vineyard just up the road from me.....guess they have lots of water cause drip is what I expected to see and not the overhead watering

It does show how it is easy to blame one group while ignoring what is in "your back yard"