Turning back, and then turning off your garden's automatic watering system in December

-

If you live in the Phoenix, Arizona area, like I do, you know how hot it gets in the summer, and how important it is to have an automatic watering system. Mine is a simple one, which uses timers that run on batteries. And there are only two things that my timers do: frequency and duration.

Frequency means how often the water comes on, like every day, or every hours. Duration is for how long it stays on each time, like for 10 minutes, or 30 minutes. I generally leave the duration the same at 15 minutes, and in the heat of the summer, the water comes on every day, and then as the weather gets a little cooler, I switch it to 48 hours, then 72, hours, the once a week.

It's been crazy hot this year in Phoenix, so I've left the frequency on at 48 hours. And then suddenly, wham, it's winter cold, and I've switched it to once a week. Right around Christmas I turn the water off completely, and don't turn it on again until February, or late January. Phoenix tends to get light rain in late December and in January, which I call "Christmas rains", and for my bulbs I'll get out there and hand water every few days in the winter.

My garden uses very little water, and of course I don't have grass, so I don't need to use the watering system at all in the winter. This not only saves me money, and conserves water, but my plants don't want water when it's cold, especially my cycads, which can die from root rot by having their feet in cold water.

I've been using this system for over twenty years now, and every once in a while I think maybe I should invest in a more expensive system. But this system works great, and when the timers fail (which they do!), I just get another one. I keep a spare timer sitting around. And I keep plenty of batteries around, too. It's a simple system, but it works for me, and the plants love it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to tell if your cycad (sago palm) is alive or dead

-
Image
Cycads are strange plants. They're beautiful, and look like small palm trees, or large ferns. They grow very slowly, and can be very expensive, even common ones like "sago palms". But sago palms, in spite of their common name, aren't palms at all. They belong to a group of plants called cycads. They are wonderfully weird, and grow in strange ways. And sometimes they lose all of their leaves. Of course, if it were a palm tree that lost all of its leaves, you would know that the plant was dead. But it's not true of cycads. So don't dig that cycad up and throw it away! Not yet. If you've recently transplanted a cycad, and the leaves have all faded away, hang on. Take a look at the top center of the plant, at what I call "the pucker". There you will see some stubby, soft fronds, no more than an half-inch or so. At least that's what you should see. That means that the plant is still alive, and has dropped its leaves to focus on building r...
Read more

Rooting sago palm pups for more plants

-
Image
Once a sago palm ( cycas revoluta ) reaches a certain level of maturity, it starts to create pups. Like agaves, these are little plants that are exactly the same as the parent plant, only smaller. And yes, you can trim them off and grow them into new plants. This is how to do it. Cut them off from the parent plant with a sharp knife. If there are any roots at the bottom, try to save them, but chances are there won't be any. That's not a problem. The next step is rooting them. Douse the cut part and the bottom of the plant with some garden sulfur and some rooting hormone powder. Rooting hormone powder is pretty easy to find at your local Home Depot. I had to go to a real nursery to get garden sulfur. Anyway, the idea is to keep the little plant from rotting while giving it time to grow its own roots. Sago palm pups being rooted Bury them fairly deep in some free-draining mix. It should include volcanic pumice, if you can find it, and if not, you can use perlite. I ...
Read more

How to transplant a cycad cutting to get another plant

-
Image
One of the nice things about cycads is that they "pup". That is, they send offshoots that are exact replicas of the mother plant (or father plant, as the case may be). And some types of cycads, like dioon edules, tend to pup a lot. And that means that you can get a whole 'nother plant from one. This is how: • Cut the pup off with a saw. Chances are you'll have to dig down a bit to see where the pup is connected, but that will work out fine because the cut won't show on the main plant afterwards. Be prepared to do a fair amount of sawing! • Dig around the pup and see if you can get as much of its own root system as possible.  Pups that are softball size or bigger will have their own roots, the ones that are smaller won't and will need to be "rooted up". If your pup is big enough and has even a few roots, you're in luck, you can just plant it. Fill the hole up with free-draining potting soil (for palms and cactus) and firm it in. If done rig...
Read more