Is it worth it

[Mangetout]

All our veg are outside and I get loads of toms and courgettes every day. But I just can't keep up with the watering because there just isn't enough in the well. Are you all using well water or tap?

[Blaze]

@Mangetout We don't have a well but we are well-practised at saving tap water from the kitchen, showers** etc. Plus we had hundreds of litres saved from the rain we had in the spring.
** We have to run off nearly 5 litres every time we have a shower because of the very long pipe run from the water heater to our bathroom (often a problem with longères). So this gets saved, and we take a bucket into the shower and generally catch a bucket bull which would otherwise have gone down the plug 'ole. It's used for flushing the loo or watering the plants.
It's hotter in Maine&Loire than it is here ...

[exile]

Watering is an issue since we are regularly and currently on restrictions*. I have 300l water butts on just about all of the down pipes on building rooves and I have installed gutters and smaller butts on the small sheds.

We don't have wells around here. You would probably have to go down 600m or more to get to a water source.

* I had hoped that moving from purely source water for the village to having a direct piped supply from the Rhone as a top up would make a difference - it hasn't this year.

[curtis]

It's more of a hobby for me - if you don't save the seeds of the veg you want to grow again, you'll never balance the books. However, the taste of home-grown has no rival.

Our library has a grainothèque and each year people deposit various seeds for all sorts of vegetables and flowers.

[Lori]

We've moved to Level 3 Crise water restrictions here. Village water will be turned off permanently tomorrow. We too are using buckets to save the kitchen water (from rinsing veggies/fruits, etc.). We use it to water the herb garden in the evening. I'm glad I never got around to planting tomatoes or other potted plants. Can't water them now.

Our hot water heater is directly above our shower, so it gets hot almost instantly. Now, we've begun turning off the shower water while washing. Easy to do in the heat of the Summer.

No rain in sight here. Just baking heat. We are in serious need of rain.

[Veem]

I stopped growing veg a number of years ago when I spent hours over weeks tending about 12 broad bean plants only to have drought and weeds get the better of the patch. We had one meal off those plants before everything else became shrivelled and tough. I still envy those who can produce the things we love but cannot buy in the local shops; proper fresh, tender peas, young moist and tasty broad beans, runner beans (Coco beans don't hold a candle), freshly picked sweet corn, Cos lettuce, purple sprouting, any green cabbage with some flavour (kale or spring greens would be wonderful) tomatoes that have taste ............. The list goes on.
In the meantime I pick my way through fine beans well on their way to going mouldy.

[Bayleaf]

It's more of a hobby for me - if you don't save the seeds of the veg you want to grow again, you'll never balance the books. However, the taste of home-grown has no rival.

Ditto. We're using a four-season polytunnel this year. During the hottest months, both sides can be rolled up, and the front door is always open. But the toms are protected from overhead rain - as we now know they don't like it! We're just trying to concentrate on the things we buy a lot of, that can be expensive. Tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, chives, capsicums and chilli peppers, lettuce and carrots. We also have strawberries and rasberries dotted around the place, in unorthodox containers. We'll grow a few kale plants for winter, and I'd also like to try planting August potatoes, and then more spring onions and peas when the polytunnel is closed up, for a December crop. If we didn't have spring water, I wouldn't bother. If this drought goes on much longer, I wonder how long before even that gives up .....

[Hotrodder]

Apart from a few bits and bobs in the polytunnel we have given up the fight. The large outside veggie area was just too much work. The weeds here grow so fast they overtake the young crops and steal their sun and soil nutrients, and too much digging, spuds regularly get blight, onions refuse to grow at all. In fact I planted and replanted the same onion sets three years running and they never increased in size. The last straw was when some critters discovered they like my sweet corn better than the rubbish maize grown all around this area. They would chew the ends of each cob, effectively killing it before it was properly ripe for picking. We used to have a bumper crop of runner beans but this year after planting 50 seeds, not a single one came up. Looking into the seed pots after some weeks of waiting there wasn't a single bean to be found. Whatever beast was stealing them didn't leave any signs. After planting plum, apple, and cherry trees as well as several ordinary trees in an effort to "green up" a boring grassy field some critter has started chewing the bark and breaking off all the lower shoots and has totally destroyed about a dozen trees. Even a Cypress Leylandi that was planted at about a metre tall took five years to gain another 30cm and then the mystery critter chewed it to death. So I'm not spending any more time money and backache trying to improve my garden. And don't get me started on the bloody moles!

[MAD87]

@Hotrodder The maize is almost certainly grown as cattle feed, not for humans.
I sympathize with your botanic problems - we've had most of those in the past. Your mystery critter could be deer or even boar.

[Bayleaf]

We've learnt to live with the critters (we've had to really!). I was woken up to a strange scuffling sound the other morning, looked out the bedroom window, and caught someone breakfasting on the Rosa Rugosa rosehips (or buds!)

Deer1.jpg

Deer2.jpg

The second photo was taken through glass with secondary glazing, hence the misty look. Little Deer clocked a noise, and we had a staring match - neither daring to move!

Our veggie area is well protected by buildings and all sorts of obstacles around it, as it basically all raised, on top of an old piggery yard. So hopefully no critters will get that far!

IMG_20220801_103634.jpg