Allotment watering

[spud57]

Hi there - we have just started on our new allotment which has no water supply We have a small shed with guttering and a modest water butt but I am concerned about watering in summer... Can anyone please advise what would be good to plant that needs minimum watering? We have large raised beds at home which we can put the more tender stuff in but a lot of space to fill at the allotment!

[Potter]

Hi Spud57,

I'm afraid that I can't help with the amount of water you'd need as this will be my first summer with my allotment. However, I would definately make good use of all the rain and connect up more water saving devices. We only have one of those blue barrels as a water butt connected to an apex 6 x 8 greenhouse and it is always full. I even used 10 watering can loads in one session and the barrel was topped up by the time we next went. We are thinking about connecting another to the first as an overflow and also one on the other side of the greenhouse. Could you do the same?

[spud57]

Thanks Potter - we are definitely going to sort out guttering and water butts Last year was very wet but if it is drier and water more scarce I was wondering what would be the best things to plant......?

[zazen999]

Hi
We have the same problem; and I'm keeping the more high maintenance stuff close to home. Potatoes, onions, carrots and broccoli and romanesco are going in the lottie [it if ever gets rotavated] this year; with a couple of beds of sweetcorn. All will be mulched to the max, and I'll look out some of those water butts that you use on camping sites to get water from home to the lottie. Once a shed goes up I'll link up a water butt and some guttering. Probably a good layer of cardboard and newspaper underneath each plant to help conserve rations.

We are quite close to the Derwent so the council are putting a system in to pump water up to the lottie; not sure which decade they will be doing this in so until then...only takes a borehole a few feet deep and a pump. Apparently, the other site got preference as the plotholders are made up of alot of the local council heirarchy. Don't get me started...

[Digger-07]

My only suggestion is to get as many barrels as you can. I had 5 connected together on my last plot. and that was only just enough at times.

[Storm]

the other thing to consider is *how* you plant your veg.


when i lived in spain, we used to plant almost everything in a bowl-shaped depression in the ground that would act as a water trap when rain fell. i have done this on raised beds in the garden as well.

line the "bowl" with fine mulch as well to help reatain moisture. as teh plant grows, keep adding mulch to nearly fill the "bowl".

for perennials we dug a small trench with a level bottom through the bed about 10-12 cm deep and buried a plastic pipe in it with holes in it. One end of the pipe poked above ground and water would be poured into it with a funnel and a cloth stuffed in to close it off after. this way, the water didn't just sit on the surface and evaporate.

mulch spread generously over any bed will also conserve moisture.

our new lottie has the same problem as yours but if we have a summer anything like the last one i suspect that all our veg will drowning not baking

good luck!!!!

[Snadger]

Get a couple of 1000ltr square water tanks and build a canopy over them that feeds the rain water into them!
I picked up one for £20 but sometimes you can get them for free!

[Eyren]

Members of the onion family tend to prefer things on the dry side, IIRC, though you won't get such a good crop if the weather is very very dry, obviously. There's a feature on drought-resistant crops in this month's GYO, btw, so maybe you should check that out

[Two_Sheds]

My water butts are only half-full now (or half-empty, depending on your viewpoint) St Margaret's site - a set on Flickr
I've been watering my transplants in, but will now leave them to it, mostly.

[carlseawolf]

I've got 3 - 100l barrels on my shed and planning for another 5-8 to be feed of the greenhouse when i get the guttering finished.

When positioning your barrels i like to raise mine of the ground so kids can't climb in them and a hose can be attached to the tap at the bottom and walked around the plot to water instead of filling watering cans from the barrel and carrying them to the plants.

Another handy tip is to get a small lenght of hose and put hozelock quick conectors on each end , then connect one end to the barrel under the shed guttering and the other to another of your empty barrels and turn both taps on so it fills both barrels at once. This is also a good way of filling barrels that are on the plot but not under guttering as long as the barrel been filled is lower to the ground than the one under the guttering.

Here's mine on the shed and the barrel under the white guttering is connected to the barrel on the far left so both fill together , and when i need to water plants i connect the long hose that is coiled up the other side of the shed to a full barrel. Even though these barrels are at the bottom of a slope the hose will still work half way up the plot.

[Two_Sheds]

I'm not going to water my plot this year, as an experiment. I'm going to mulch everything really well, and just water individual plants if they look wilty.

(transplanted veg gets puddled in, then mulched with dry soil, and left to it)

We've had a really dry 6 weeks so far, and everything is fine (so far). Although the surface is dry, under the ground the plants are finding moisture.

[zazen999]

That's pretty much what we did last year...we now have a water butt which is proving a godsend for transplanting as last year they were left to their own devices much to the amusement of the other lottie holders [who have water] as they sniggered over my wilty brassicas and who then came over to apologise when they perked up and provided us with food all winter long when their lotties were pretty much bare.

[Snadger]

Once established, it can be detrimental to water plants as it just brings the roots to the surface where once we get a bad drought they die.

Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind and only water if plants are REALLY wilted!

[rana]

I'm with Snadger on this one. Plants will find water if they are forced to. By watering and pampering young veg all of the time all you do is soften them up so when the real drought comes in summer they just keel over. Treat 'em hard and they will do better for it.

[Storm]

I've found that if root veg (like spuds and parsnips) tend to be disappointingly small when I don't water them in dry spells. Our allotments are so dry that even after a few days of sun there are cracks big enough to put a finger in!