The grass is crispy and yellow and some of the shrubs are in obvious stress. We have actually had about 30mm of rain during December but it doesn’t feel like it.
I spent the first half of my life living in Bolton near Manchester in the north of England, which could be the birthplace of the grey, wet, miserable UK climate cliche. Despite my dim recollections of an overwhelmingly wet childhood it actually only rains about 180 days of the year and gets about 1100mm. Amazingly this is about the same annual rainfall as Mount Colah, Sydney, Australia where I live now.
When researching for a talk I did for Penrith City Council (still within Greater Sydney limits) I checked the Bureau of Meteorology to see exactly what their annual rainfall is – about 850mm per year. Whilst visiting John Champagne at his 30 years established permaculture oasis (Brogo Permaculture Gardens) he mentioned he has never had one year of average rainfall – either a lot less or a lot more than the average over a long period.
The point of all that is to illustrate that although I would love there to be a one size fits all model of how to water the garden, there isn’t one. Add to your location other variables such as the type of soil, aspect, wind, microclimates and it is almost impossible to pin down what you should do. So in the absence of that information I made my own rules up, and this video illustrates what I’m doing. I also go into a bit about drip irrigation, water tanks and plumbing to show how I’m doing it.
