[Aunt Sally]

I do that in a lot of my pots and tubs Munty.  

I'm guessing you mean cut the bottom off of a lemonade bottle and stick the neck into the pot.  Fill bottle with water.

[muntjac]

no hon .. fill the bottle up with watter .. and a liquid feed if ya wanna . now open the top until it just drips very slowly .now close it up a tiny bit more and place it down on a slope .now it will drip out slow because of the pressure outside , barometric pressure or summat i said before im not sure how it works but it does lolo

[ziggywigs]

I water mine when its a hot summer but only a good drenching once a week.   They did ok with this treatment last year. It does have to be a very hot summer before i get the water out though as once you start.....

[Aunt Sally]

Thanks Munty I'll have a go at that  

[WG.]

I wouldn't need to water much if we had your rain fall WG.  

Now I understand.  Actually you aren't far behind (Tonbridge averages 700mm) but I guess you get it a lot hotter so more evaporation.  Mulching and Munty's trickle-feed pop bottles will help but I guess you know most of that already.

[Aunt Sally]

Over the 26 month period from November 2004 to December 2006, the total rainfall here amounted to only 71% of the average. 2006 was the 4th consecutive year here with below average rainfall.

Send us a few bottles of the wet stuff WG    

[ytyynycefn]

I didn't even have a water butt on site for most of last year, so had to carry water from my house a couple of hundred yards away - needless to say, not much stuff got watered!  

However, even the brassica transplants did OK, my swedes and beetroot were pretty small, as were my leeks, but that may have been down to general incompetance as well!  :oops: I was very pleased with the other crops, though - I used pop bottles to water the squashes, and that worked well.

This year, I have 2000 litres of water storage capacity on site (mine, all mine!), so I'm planning on giving each bed a thick mulch and a really good soak once a week - my soil seems to hold water quite well.  Does this sound like a good idea to those who know?  I know not to do a little sprinkle every day, as that just encourages the roots to come to the surface in search of the wet stuff.  Obviously transplants will get a little more tlc.

Rain isn't a problem here, and there hasn't been a hosepipe ban since the eighties, apparently, but I don't want to get caught out again!

[muntjac]

you do the mulching werks for me mel