Hot and Dry, a gardening recipe for disaster?

A lot of heat and no rain certainly can be a recipe for disaster in any garden, but as a gardener you've gotta be resilient and plan a little... My hubby and I bought our own home in late 2009 and since then I've taken a great liking to the garden. Although at the moment with this ridiculously dry heat in Perth it's really difficult for my plants to grow let alone for me to get outside and do much with them. All I end up doing is sweating like crazy and trying not to get sunburnt. Oh well... a casual trip to the beach or a quick shower always do the trick ;) But we've recently discovered the benefits of compost -a natural water saving wonder! A few months ago I set up a 240L compost bin, which although we don't add that much veggie waste to is already helping improve the water retention capacity of the very sandy soils we have here in our garden :) 


This might sound funny but I've also enjoyed learning about pests and diseases since I started in the garden. Some of you might remember I had a batch of tomatoes last year? Well they all got struck with powdery mildew so I had to cull them *sad face*. But after that I planted out some capsicum seeds, literally from my cooking offcuts, and now I've got three rows of thriving young capsicums plants! And with the mildew experience under my belt I learned that we should only water our crop in the mornings so that water doesn't sit on the leaves over night. However, we often only find time (and motivation) to water them in the cool of the night, so I'm  now much more careful not to get water on any leaves... *fingers crossed, no mildew this time*. Capsicums generally like the heat and are deep rooted but we're also making efforts to give them a little extra water from that occasional bath or bucket in the shower, in addition to the compost and mulch of course ;)


Another good water saving tip we've come across is to plant succulents and hardy plants in preference to the delicate ones. Some may say they don't look as pretty but why not spruce them up a bit with some pretty rocks!? They sure don't need no water! Last October when my Mum, Dad and brother came to visit, Mum and I made a little rock garden. It really adds to the courtyard and helps retain some of that precious water too :)

Our rockery (left) and leafy capsicum plantation (right)