dryness

It has been an extremely dry spring, and there has been relatively little rain for a couple of years now.

The other day when I was renovating the garden bit near the compost I was shocked to notice the dry sandiness of the soil. My tough minimal watering practice depends on nurturing and enriching the soil with compost so that the soil is on the one hand not too loose and drainy, and on the other, not so dry, hard compacted that any moisture runs off instead of penetrating.

It also depends on growing tough determined plants who are able to push their roots down, down, down, towards any underground moisture.

So far this has worked. But with another record hot dry summer predicted, who knows what will survive and what won't? Time - and this blog - will tell.