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A puzzle!

Started by Palustris, July 27, 2006, 17:57:40

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Palustris

Walking round the garden this afternoon with a visitor, we were saddened to see just how many well established bushes and trees are beginning to droop. We have had no measurable rain this month and precious little most of last either. We are talking here of hundreds of pounds worth of plants. The last time we looked at one of our Euonymous alata, a similar sized one was £125!
The puzzle? What do we do? Attempt to water, remembering that we pay for water as we use it and the pressure is so poor we would have to carry watering cans over to these trees. It also takes a lot of water to revitalise something 20 foot tall!
Let them die? If they do we will not be able to replace them except with pieces of things which do survive. In that case the garden goes from one full of exciting and different plants to a very commonplace affair.
We don't know, unless it rains and rains for a very long time, we are going to lose between a third and a half of all the plants we have.
It is taking all the energy we have to keep the food production side of the garden going.
Gardening is the great leveller.

Palustris

Gardening is the great leveller.

silly billy

Im no expert but surely if they are well established you wont lose any of them.
My idea was to build Liverpool into a bastion of invincibility. Napoleon had that idea. He wanted to conquer the bloody world. I wanted Liverpool to be untouchable. My idea was to build Liverpool up and up until eventually everyone would have to submit and give in. Bill Shankly.

tim

Speaking of trees, Eric - you know better than I do that it would take 100s of gallons to get down to their roots as far out as their spread??

We have pipes going down to the roots of all our newer trees, but they can only cope with a few feet around the base, & that doesn't cover the feeding roots.

beejay

This is a huge dilemma for you, & for many other gardeners/horticulturalists including many of the gardens open to the public, with special collections or specimins. I think you answered your own question in what to do by saying it is taking all your energy to keep the food production side going. Assuming that we are likely to get more of this type of the weather in the future, you would have to to keep on watering particular plants to keep them alive. I think that all any of us can do is to ensure the growing conditions for our plants are the best we can provide & then keep our fingers crossed! In a small garden or where it is only a couple of plants we can give a bit of special treatment, but otherwise.... Let us hope that the "coping mechanisms" of many plants will see them through this spell.

This is a huge & interesting topic!

CotswoldLass

We' re surrounded by woodland.....and increasingly, prolific early leaf fall ....

pansy

I noticed the early leaf fall too, is that a kind of coping mechanism? To conserve energy / water whatever?

Palustris

One thing we are doing is to copy nature and as soon as any herbaceous plants has finished we are cutting right back to the ground. This at least stops some water loss through transpiration. Though in the long term it does weaken the plants as they have a shorter time in which to feed themselves.
Gardening is the great leveller.

CotswoldLass

It is very odd, for July in England. On our woodland walk this evening, the amount of leaves fallen was autumnal. And there's nothing to be done.

This wood has been here for hundreds of years. May it continue...It's beautiful...
CLx

Gadfium

Trees lose most of their water by transpiration out through their leaves, by losing the leaves they are limiting water losses. 

I haven't been out on a walk to compare differences, but the shallow-rooted deciduous trees (horse chestnut, beech) may be showing more signs of drought stress than those which have deeper roots (e.g. oak).

CotswoldLass

From what I've observed, I'd say you're spot on Gadfium

Robert_Brenchley

They must have survived droughts before. What happened in 1976?

Gadfium

Usually the trees can easily weather a solitary drought year - like the fabulous long, hot summer of 1976 (I remember that one well... spent most of it building rafts & swimming in the river);  2-3 lean rainfall years (in a row) are also generally surmountable.

Problems arrive when you have more than that, with little respite. The trees' roots suffer, get damaged & die back. Given short-term droughts they usually recover, but this doesn't happen long-term. There's a limit to the stress the plant can cope with. Toss in the overall hotter summers (a lot of them in the past 15 years) and that's starting to wreak havoc with some of the woodland ecosystems. Those trees on fast-draining substrates/soils are having an especially tough time; at least clay soils tend to hold onto what moisture they have for significantly longer..

Plus, this 'drought/climate' stress on a prolonged period is providing windows of opportunity for various insects/fungi/diseases to gain a good hold in the weakened trees - and what with the mild winters over the last few years... there aren't the good sharp heavy frosts/snows, over a decent time frame,  to  naturally wipe the slate clean on some of these intruders.  Add in a lowered water table, and you compound the problems for trees in areas that used to be swimming in the stuff, but are now in significantly different conditions.

The trees smack-bang in the firing line are among the commonest and most well-known: oak, beech and Scot's pine... pretty much our native woodland, perfectly adapted, over several hundred years, to our climatic conditions - only those conditions have recently and rapidly shifted away from the old parameters

:(.


Palustris

Thank you Gadfium. I too remember the drought of '76 and the one in '64 too.
We normally get about half the national average rainfall at the best of times (?15 inches or so). This is because we are in the rain shadow of various hills which lie between us and the normal rain bearing clouds.
What we are looking at here is the culmination of probably 5 years of drought. There is no residue of moisture deep in the soil for even the deepest rooted plants to find. There is a well in the corner of the garden, there is no water in it at all and that is 30 feet down!
I had to dig a deep hole the other day for a fence post. I got down over 2 feet and despite 10 years of adding moisture retaining material, there was nothing in the soil whatsoever.
It has just rained for 40 minutes, vaguely. 1/4 of an inch in the water button the greenhouse. I have not looked but, last time we had that amount of rain, 2 miles away they had floods!
We lose stuff, then so be it we lose it. Already a lot of the more susceptible stuff has burnt off, I noticed that most of the Saxifrages are now brown lumps (and they do NOT regrow from below ground). That's gardening for you!
Gardening is the great leveller.

Mrs Ava

It is a big worry.  On the drive home from Dover on Saturday, one thing my darling and I both noticed was how all of the horse chestnuts in the lanes were already looking autumnal.  Then when we got home and walked up the garden, we scrunched up through dry leaves fallen from our willow...and I mean drifts of leaves!  The tree is looking very sad.  We have lost a berberis through the drought already, and it was well established having been in-situ for at least 6 years.  I have lost most of my astilbes and my woodland garden is now just a dust bowl.  A big redesign for my garden this autumn, but of course, compared to your lovely garden Eric, it is only small, so easy-ish to do.  There are cracks in the lawn - and we are not on a hosepipe ban and do not pay for our water, and yet, watering isn't helping.  It is very disheartening.  :'(

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