Winter Watering

Sure, a lot of you out there don't worry one bit about watering your stuff in the winter.  I bet you have had snow or rain, too.  Watering in the winter is really important out here in our desert.  We have had literally no precipitation from snow or rain since early October.  What's a garden to do?

I managed to water a fair amount until around Thanksgiving but it has been tough since then.  That is over 4 weeks of barely getting any water on the garden.

I managed to water these last few days but the East Side Windbreak is giving me fits.  There are some ice chunks in there since some of the tubing is buried and they don't want to melt.  The cloud cover hasn't helped me a bit.  The place hasn't gone below freezing overnight for the third night in a row.  Yahoo!!!  In fact it was 36 degrees at dawn.  This is my third day of trying to water the East Side.  Looks like the water is flowing through the irrigation tubing with a few minor problems that are ironing themselves out as the morning progresses.  I am going to leave the water on for at least four hours.





I still need to get the Front Zone watered.  The tubing is a mess in the back and the irrigation tubing runs along the Northside of the house so it is the other area that is hard to water.  Hopefully today is the day and by the afternoon I will be able to gt the water going there.

The biggest concern with everything getting too dry is the evergreens.  The Barker cypress, junipers, Leland cypress, pines like the Jeffries and Austrian pines, all can get very unhappy.  The other problem is that if only one side of the tree is getting watered the dry side can gt die back.  So, it is important to water whenever one has the chance in the winter.

Other than that, all you can do is cross your fingers.  This is tough country to garden in and every year is different.  This year has bee 8 degrees at night and forties in the daytime, for the most part, for all of November.