Manzana chillies and rinse water

Oops! - nearly lost my last Manzana chilli plant in the latest heat wave…

My fault of course - I lost track of which one of the 50 watering cycles this particular plant relies upon. And although I’ve grown this chilli in the past I’d somehow failed to keep the seed-line alive except for this single plant. As Manzana chilli seeds are simply no longer to be found in my favourite heritage seed catalogue this is something I can’t afford to happen. It’s my favourite chilli, now rare and irreplaceable.

‘Permanent wilting point’ is the scientific term for ‘death’ in plants – lack of soil moisture causes the remaining water in the plant tissue to be drawn out in a last ditch attempt to maintain life. So tissue – and hence the leaves and stems – wilt and droop as cell turgor is lost.

This extremity can be reached very quickly in hot weather and particularly in sandy soils that aren’t as good as loams and clays at holding soil water available to the plant root system.

To cap all that off, this particularly chilli bush is exposed to the full heat of the westerly sun, so must deal with this source of water stress in addition to the gardener’s inattention.

There is only one thing that saved this rare heritage chilli; the fact that I was on holidays and so around the garden all day. As this small chilli has been planted right outside the backdoor in easy reach of the cook, it caught my eye just in time.

So which irrigation schedule is it on? It turns out that its alone, by itself, outside the norm and utterly reliant on the gardener to keep it alive. For I water this one plant by hand, stealing the occasional bucket of rinse water out from under the cook’s nose, as she has her own favourites to water.

And that rinse water?  Lots of small items just aren’t worthy of the trip to the dish-washer and so get rinsed over a 5 litre bucket in the sink. This water is saved rather than allowed to run to waste down the drain. All it takes are a series of routine trips to the garden to dispose of each bucketful as it become available.

So rather than wait for the ‘wilting point’ symptoms to manifest themselves I have installed a GDot soil moisture sensor dedicated to this one Manzana chilli.

Maybe even the cook will spot its plight next time and make a rinse-water donation when needed?

The last week of Spring

The months of work leading up to Spring changeover in the garden are just about over; there remains but one week of Spring to oust winter crops and transplant Spring seedlings from trays into beds to finish establishing crops that will mature over our southern summer months to be harvested from February through to May next year.

Bed 3 of 13 has been cleared of the last of the winter broccoli and kale and broad beans, but I’ve lost all my soil moisture by failing to clear out these seeding giants soon enough. So last week’s watering with the rainbow sprinkler is followed this week by a thick covering of new barley straw mulch, pinned in place by new drip lines to wet up the soil lines along which tomatoes, basil, coriander, red Dutch cabbage and eggplants will be planted out.

It’s nerve wracking to have the taps running for many hours on end filling the irrigation tanks that drive these drip lines. But that’s what I need to do to get these seedlings established.

Maybe next year I’ll get it right, and so save on all that valuable water being put out on the eve of summer?

Ah well, the gardening expenses of water, mulch and irrigation pipe are long-term investments in my learning how to drive this garden efficiently once global warming starts messing with the climate and the rainfall. I’ll continue to have fresh and nutritious food up at the house after each day’s work.

Pouring on the water…

The beginning of the Australian summer is now only a fortnight away and the pressures of a gardening life are reaching a crescendo as the soil dries out and the need to finish planting out seedlings takes on a final urgency.

Watering also begins; sometimes well into the night. As always there’s not enough mulch to lock down this new moisture. Drip irrigation, despite its great efficiency at placing water exactly around the roots of sensitive plants, is dead slow to apply. Unless one plans work out a week in advance – and mine don’t – desperate measures are required.

So winter beds are cleared and prove to have dried out. Under these circumstances the soil has to be ‘restarted’ by up to 12 hours of watering with the rainbow sprinkler clamped to the top of an aluminium ladder; this covers the whole bed and pushes moisture down to at least 15 cms. This only works on weekends when the gardener is around the place - continual adjustments to the water pressure are needed to keep water within the bed and off the surrounding paths.

Very slowly the summer vegetable garden takes shape; the lettuces and salad greens are in and their moisture levels settled. Next cucumbers are planted along available fence lines and the ground readied for zucchinis and beetroots. Slowly the number of trays on the seed tables declines and order begins to return – if only there was time left over to bask in some sort of glow of accomplishment...

But there are a few laughs along the way; over in the chook yard I’ve been baiting for rats that are stealing chicken food and scaring the cook. I catch the neighbour’s cat instead. I let him out unharmed, and he gets off home.