Let it rain!

I have been watching the Melbourne Rain Radar today, tracking a band of light showers that has been slowly making its way to our city.

Whether it's global warming or just the cycle of drought, it no longer rains in Melbourne. A decade ago, Melbourne water storage was hovering around 70% capacity and has been dropping over the years, down to a very depressing 33.8% this week. October used to be the wettest month with an average rainfall of 67mm but last month we received 14mm. When talking to other garden lovers, we talk about the last time we used umbrellas and how as children, it used to rain non stop for a week. When it does rain now or even if it showers for longer than 10 minutes, it's a real joy.

There are watering restrictions in our state which bans free-for-all use of mains water including watering gardens, hosing down driveways, washing cars, filling pools. Watering gardens in Melbourne has been restricted to two hours twice a week which I believe is quite sufficient for ornamental gardens but is not viable for those who decide to plant edibles which need to be kept moist constantly.

The Victorian Government has announced two major works to address our water issue: a North-South pipe line which diverts water from the Goulburn River to Melbourne and a desalination plant. Personally I would rather see more of our storm water and waste water recycled.

As a garden owner, but due to lack of space I have only about 700 litres worth of water storage, which is very little. As a consequence I have turned into a water miser whittling the average mains water usage down to about 80 litres/day/person.

I use clean kitchen water (from washing vegetables, steaming food) to water my pot plants and ornamentals. My water storages are mainly used for my edibles.I mulch a lot and grow a lot of drought tolerant plants. I lug grey water from the washing machine around in buckets. It's all hard work but I do think that gardeners need to do whatever they can to save water in the garden. I am still a bit frivolous, I can't resist growing flowering annuals such as violas but I restrict them to pots and only water them with reclaimed water. For the rest of my garden, I mulch a lot, I ensure the soil is not water repellent and apply wetting agents if it is. Over the past two years I have used mains water to water my garden about 4 times and I admit that it's rather intoxicating and relaxing to stand in the garden in the early morning, hose in hand, giving the garden a nice long drink. Those days I suppose may be a thing of the past.

Postscript to this entry: in the early hours of the morning after posting this, it poured down and we got about 15mm in total. Hooray!