It was very hard not to get depressed this summer every time I looked outside. By the time I was able to get back outside after my surgery the drought was in full swing. My rain barrels helped some but when there is no rain coming for weeks on end empty barrels don’t do much for getting water into the soil. Since I can’t afford to water the way the plants needed it I backed off of pretty much everything garden wise this summer and went into survival mode. The containers were watered as were a few willows and roses. Not nearly as much water as they needed to thrive but enough to keep them alive.
By the time the rain came back it was too late to do much of anything with what was out there. The deer saw to it that we had all of about a dozen tomatoes this year and the late frost took out this years crop of blackberries for the most part. We did get a good number of raspberries but the flavor wasn’t great. Next year they will have to get more water. The figs loved the heat and dry temps. No rust and the fruit was soooo good. I am supposed to have two brown turkey figs but they are obviously two different varieties. One has smaller dark purple fruit and the other has the larger brown turkey like fruit. Both were very tasty. I did try my hand at some Porto Rico sweet potatoes in a half barrel and they did ok. The vines were very pretty hanging over the side of the barrel.
Now that the ground isn’t like cement I do want to put my Joseph’s coat in the ground. It has been in a protected spot where it only rec’d a couple of hours of sun per day. That coupled with the daily waterings and it looks better than pretty the other roses that are in the ground.
I tried my hand at hypertufa today only to find that the project I had planned was going to take double the amount of product I mixed up. So there was a last minute switcharoo to try to make something work. Time will tell.
Today was also the day that I emptied the rain barrels and reattached the downspouts for the winter. I was afraid that the water would freeze in the barrels and split them. Upon upending one of the barrels I found a rather sleepy female black widow with an egg sac.
You can’t see the red hourglass that is on her underside in these photos but a quick google search should turn up a picture or two if you are interested.
Love your close photo’s of the spiders. I too had a high expectations of rain barrels being of help this year. With no rain, we used gray water to fill the tanks and run soaker hoses out to the plants. We are using a rain barrel that we made ourselves from a kit we bought at http://www.aquabarrel.com.
I am going to go the gray water route next year. Unfortunately most of the garden is higher than the house so that will necessitate a pump to get the water onto the garden or into a temporary storage barrel. I haven’t worked out the entire plan yet but I still have a few months.
I checked out aquabarrel. They seem to have lots of stuff but I think the kits are a bit overpriced for items you can get at pretty much any local hardware store.