Did you make the most of the rainfall?

Some things you may have done were:

• put pot plants in open areas
• put out some buckets or containers to catch water
• remove the cover from your pool to get a top up
• danced in the rain, enjoy the feeling of rain and be grateful for the water in our gardens

Robert Fugram

  Do you agree with him?

It’s certainly true for gardening – instead of watching your neighbours’ green gardens, care for your own and it will be a green haven for you. Conserve your water, plan your garden carefully, and it will stay green despite the weather.

Most of us have heard about the Big Bang theory and evolution, but the story behind water is less known – certainly less talked about.

An interesting blog entry called Water: the lifeblood of our planet outlines the most common theories of water arriving on Earth in large bodies and is worth a read. Or just look at their magnificent pictures of masses of water.

According to estimaes from teh Australian Bureau of STatistics (ABS), AUstralian domestic water usage is n average of 272 litres per day (about 103,000 litres per year) in 2004/05. That’s a LOT of water.

Per state use varies a bit:

Victoria – 222L
WA – 493L
NT – 419L
Tasmania – 392L
Qld – 340L
ACT – 260L
SA – 258L
NSW – 230L

Picture the 10 litre bucket in your laundry – now imagine 22 of them full of water. Does it shock you that you may use more water than that every day?

A nice quote, to me it says - be gentle to our planet like water can be, be gentle to water itself. But be strong enough to change your habits to protect water and Earth, and strong enough to encourage others to do the same.

What do you think?

It may not have been possible to get a tank in when you saw the rains coming (which is a pity as it probably would have filled a number of times!) but that doesn’t mean you can’t make the most of that water…

• put out buckets, bowls, plastic tubs, etc and collect some rain to use in your garden next week or use to rinse clothes
• get out in the garden between showers (downpours!) and turn over your garden beds
• aerate your lawn to maximise how much water is soaking into teh roots (You can do this by poking holes in the lawn with a pitchfork, shovel, strong stick or whatever – it doesn’t have to be a fancy aerator to work)
• park outside so your car gets a natural clean
• put all pots out where they will catch some rain – protect them from eh harshest downpours
• prepare to mulch your garden in the coming days to keep the moisture in the soil
• continue to conserve water in the house, and remind others that rain now doesn’t mean restrictions have ended or that water is still not in limited supply

But commercial pesticides can have various disadvantages to them:

• they are often toxic so need to be stored and used away from children and pets
• they can contaminate the soil
• they can be washed into our water systems – killing organisms in those systems and resulting in polluted creeks rivers and oceans
• it took a lot of energy and resources to make and package and transport the pesticide to your garden

So what are the alternatives?

• leave the bugs alone – not all of them are harmful to the plants anyway
• try companion planting – various plants and herbs are natural repellents
• use organic pesticides – we’ll add some recipes to this blog in coming weeks
• manually remove the bugs – time consuming but leaves no residue and gets you out in the garden for some fresh air!

We like to think that helping Victorians and Australains to conserve water we are doing something positive, but Severn Suzuki reminds us there is much more to be done. We thank her and share her speech with you.

Severn’s speech

We Thank Water.

We Respect Water.

We Are All Water.

We Are All One.

by Masaru Emoto, Messages from Water

Water is precious and essential. We respect and save water as part of our thanks.

Hopefully, a lot of people were collecting some of that rain water to use over summer.

And now is the time to put down some new mulch to keep as much of that moisture in the garden beds as possible.

But back to the rain! Melbourne received over 27mm of rain which is incredible after the last 10 years. For everyone who planted tomato plants over the weekend (Cup Day being the tradiaional time to plant them), it is a great start to your vegetable crop!

What did you do to celebrate the rain if you got rain over the weekend?