5 Ways To Protect Your Garden From Drought
What a start to the year!
Record-breaking temperatures along with months of severe drought and to top it off, massive bushfires across Australia. It’s been a tough season with below average rainfall affecting South East Queensland.
So how do we garden effectively during dry times and how can we protect our gardens from the ongoing heat and drought?
1. Watering
Water early in the morning or in the evening. This means watering ideally before 10am and after 4pm, which helps to prevent leaf burn and evaporation. Don’t just water the leaves but concentrate on watering plants and trees around the root zone. Water less often, but water for longer. This encourages roots to grow down deeper and enables them to better withstand dry times.
2. Use Seasol
Seasol is a seaweed solution that acts as a plant tonic. It’s like having a berocca before a big day. It will help your plants stand up to the heat and also helps stressed plants to recover better.
3. Mulch is your friend
Mulching your trees and garden beds will help to prevent moisture loss, insulate the root zone of plants on hot days, and provides organic matter to your soil, helping to condition and build better soil structure. This means better water holding capacity. It also helps to suppress weeds and looks good, giving a finished look to your garden beds. I like to use a forest mulch on garden beds or sugarcane for vegetable gardens.
4. Soil wetting agents
Soil wetting agents improve the penetration of water into soils. Products like Wettasoil and Yates Soil Wetter help get water right down to the root zone of plants and helps to retain water at the root zone for longer. Making use of these products can help to reduce water use by up to 50% and will make the most of every drop of any summer rains.
5. Trees vs Lawn
Saving your water for the trees will give a much better return on investment. Trees are so much harder to replace if they die and give back so much more. The shade and protection from the sun that mature trees provide is invaluable, the time taken to reach shade giving size is long and replacement is expensive. On the other hand, replacing a dead lawn is relatively simple and inexpensive should you need to.
Do you need advice on which trees and plants will do best in your local area? Are you thinking of a waterwise garden? Get in touch and let’s chat about the possibilities!
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