[Growster...]

We always hear the 'experts' say tha the occasional shower does little for the garden, and just runs away.

But to where does it 'run away'?

I'm always grateful for any rain which dampens the soil, drenches the leaves of our veg and flowers and shrubs, and makes the place smell marvellous!

This 'run-off' maybe the sign of another 'climate change' issue, perpetrated by those who are 'meant' to be more intelligent?

As for me, I love hearing the rain on the roof and in the garden, and if it's just for a few seconds, well, so what!

[solway cropper]

A light shower will do little for the garden as it is instantly absorbed by the dry soil and never gets to the roots where it is needed. Run-off is a different matter altogether.

You are right to be grateful for any rain but it's a bit like 'the wrong kind of snow' on railway tracks. Too much of the wrong kind of rain can actually be detrimental to growing crops.

[JayG]

There isn’t really any mystery to this; any soil which is poorly drained enough to easily become waterlogged and form puddles (i.e. usually clay) can bake so hard in dry conditions that heavy rain just runs off it, at least initially.

"Puddles" is not a word that sandy soils like mine are at all familiar with, so there is no wrong sort of rain (just not enough this year!)

[Salmo]

We had the right sort of rain today. Gentle soft rain on and off all day. First proper rain since February. The air was full of birdsong. My water butt filled up. The whole countryside sighed a sigh of relief.

[Kristen]

Always amazes me how even a light sprinkling of rain perks the plants up - in a way that my determined, but not-too-frequent, drenching of soil around plants doesn't seem to

[shokkyy]

Unless your plants are verbascum or oriental poppies, in which case rain makes them go from a glorious spike to a lying down flat squashed looking thing

[Growster...]

During a drought in the seventies/ early eighties, I copied out a load of notes from some agricultural book, and follwed the watering quantities as they suggested back then.

It seems that a sixty ft row of spuds can take about 40 gallons at marble stage, and also carrots will benefit from 2 gallons along each row at the early stages, as long as there was some water there in the first place.

I'm also watering broad beans about every other day, and they recommended 4 gals a week, which is about right for me.

I may be over-watering the onions and shallots, but it was either that, to keep them going until we had some real rain, or I lost the lot. There's a garden centre near here which still has a few packs of shallots, and so I've pulled the weakest and thinnest on the ploot, (and put them in intensive care, to see if they want to survive), and planted another 45 shallots in their place.

Possibly wasting time and money (and water), but I can't see any alternative at the moment.


I did have loads of notes from a book written even earlier, but they seem to have gone walkabout, probably in sympathy with their home desert in Australia...