Thinking Now About a Dry Year to Come
It’s beginning to look like a repeat of last year--late fall being quite wet and satisfying; winter being quite dry and unsettling. If so, the drought still is with us and again will command our attention this summer.
Rather than wait until summer, you might want to start thinking about a dry year right now, and here are some avenues to pursue:
Frustrated in his attempt to find water-saving devices, landscape architect and author Ken Smith has bravely begun a modest mail-order business in those gadgets that cannot be found at the local nursery:.
--Things like an automatic controller that will keep your automatic sprinkler system from coming on when the ground is already wet. Or another automatic controller than keeps the sprinklers from coming on when it’s raining--an even more embarrassing situation (Caltrans take note).
--Things like soil probes that let you take a core of soil so you can see how deep the water soaked or whether it’s time to water. Or the Cadillac of moisture probes, which gives you a reading on a dial (but costs like a Cadillac).
--Things like bubbler heads for your existing irrigation system that flood, rather than sprinkle, an area--a much better way. Or special soaker hoses for trees, or a whole system of tubing that waters containers.
--Things like antitranspirants that keep water from escaping from plants during critical times (during hot winds or right after planting). Or those gels that absorb 400 times their weight in water and store it for plant use, or polymers that fix problem soils.
You can get the modest catalogue of Unique Landscape Necessities by writing to Smith at 5733 Ocean View Blvd., La Canada Flintridge 91011.
Gray water has been and will continue to be a gray area. Is it even legal to save this water that is not sewage but certainly not potable? How do you save the water that we all waste simply taking a shower? Can you use it in the garden? It all seems so logical and right, but it is a tricky subject and now there is an expert handling of it in “Gray Water Use in the Landscape,” a pamphlet by Robert Kourik.
“Is Gray Water Legal?” is one section heading and the answer is “No”; but Kourik goes on to say that “the legal considerations are even grayer than the water,” and he explains the current situation. There also are warnings about the safety of using gray water, but here he says “you are the treatment facility. . . . If you contaminate your water and/or misuse it, you may get ill--and have no big bureaucracy to blame or sue. Using gray water means taking full responsibility for a part of the water cycle in your back yard. Your rewards are water conservation, a more natural ecology, money saved on your water bill and a landscape that flourishes even in the midst of drought.”
Not to mention a great cleansing of guilt while taking a too-long shower.
The remainder of the pamphlet describes and nicely illustrates--in great detail--how gray-water systems can be set up. It is the definitive work and is available for $6 from Edible Productions, P.O. Box 1841, Santa Rosa, Calif. 95402. As for drip, that proven-efficient irrigation system--and a hot topic that always comes up during a drought--you can get a free leaflet on how to install one by writing to one of the manufacturers, Rain Bird National Sales, at 145 N. Grand Ave., Glendora 91740.
“Seed Propagation of Native California Plants” by Dara E. Emery is a new reference and resource for those looking toward native plants as a source of beauty during drought. Emery, the premier plant breeder and propagator at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, has been keeping notes on the subject for years and his information is the only of its kind.
In order to appreciate this work, you must try to germinate some California native seeds; they can be irascibly difficult. You can soak them, sand them with an emery board, stratify them, smash them and still get nothing for your efforts, yet many California natives are available only as seed. One method even requires building a small fire on top of the seeds, in an attempt to duplicate what nature does in a big way.
In this paperback book, Emery briefly describes how to collect and store your own seed, then discusses the methods used to coax them into germinating (including all those just mentioned, but also some successful chemical treatments). There is information on sowing seeds, including the field sowing of wildflowers, but the bulk of the book describes what works best (or if anything is even needed), plant-by-plant.
You can get this book at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden bookstore, or by mail, for $12.50, by writing to the gardens at 1212 Mission Canyon Road, Santa Barbara 93105.
Two other useful books that have been hard to find because they originate in the San Francisco Bay Area now are available through the Strybing Arboretum Bookstore--”Success List of Water Conserving Plants” by the Saratoga Horticultural Foundation, and “Water-Conserving Plants & Landscapes for the Bay Area” by the East Bay Municipal Utility District.
The latter book is essentially a color-illustrated version of the first, and both are mostly listings of suitable plants. In this case, the differences between Southern and Northern California are not that great, and a lot can be learned from these lists. Write to the bookstore at 9th Street & Lincoln Way, San Francisco 94122, for prices and a copy of the catalogue.
Of course, we can always hope that writing about the drought, like washing the car, will bring on the rain.
