The garden at the end of May before it begins to dry out: Rose Cecile Brunner, which is a great local favourite and Lilium candidum.
Our first Mediterranean summer, and a real challenge. Whether to water, or try to hang on and not? And if we do, how often, how much?
The purists, or at least those down on the Algarve or in Andalucia might object that somewhere that grows such huge camellias as the Beira region of Portugal cannot get that dry. True, it can potentially rain a lot during most months of the year, but three to four months with no rain and high temperatures is pretty testing for plants. Almost everything herbaceous dies back, grass browns and a lot of it dies (turns out a lot of the grass you see is actually annual). Trees and shrubs stay green, including those huge camellias, as there is moisture at depth. But first plants have to grow to find it.
My aim here is to create a minimal-irrigation garden. To this end however we need to be realistic, and think about how we work the growing season. Which is complicated, as it goes like this: spring - everything grows like crazy as it is warm and usually reasonably wet, I mean like crazy, you cannot believe how fast some things grow, even centimetres per day; summer – too hot and dry for much plant metabolism so most plants go into semi-dormancy; autumn – it rains and cools and there is a second spring effect, with a lot of growth, flowering, and crucially, a lot of seed germination; winter – wet and cool, deciduous trees drop leaves, but a lot of herbaceous plants grow, albeit slowly, annuals are growing too following autumn germination, often quite strongly, with some even flowering.
So what's the problem? Two semi-dormant seasons. Lots of flower in spring, some in autumn, some in winter.
The problem is a psychological-cultural one. Summer is holiday time and people on their holies want to see green lawns and flowers. So they water. Even if they don't go on holiday and just sit around their barbecues they still want to see flowers. That's the problem. The other problem, and a more fundamental one, is that this period endangers your newly planted plants. I can live with a dormant season summer alright, with a few plants in pots, but I do want my new plants to make it through, so that they will survive, hopefully to grow deeper roots come the autumn and be self-reliant next year.
Phlomis chrysophylla, with the summer leaf-drop look. Something we are going to have to get used to. The important thing is that he youngest leaves stay on!
So, lesson number one. Don't try and make stuff look good in the summer. It's unnatural and uses a lot of water. There are two howevers here. One is veg – and when we finally get the engineers from the electricity company round (a bit 'amanha' at the moment) we're going to get a pump so we can get water out of the very impressive well we have – but just for a veg patch and small nursery area. The second however is pots. Why do people in hot climates grow so much in pots? Because they are much easier to keep watered. Water plants in the ground and most of the water disperses away from the plant, but in pot it can be monopolised by the favourite pelargonium or whoever it is you have in the pot. There is a trade-off of course: fail to water just for one day at 35ºC and you can do a lot of damage, whereas for a plant in the ground there is a much bigger buffer of deep soil moisture, so the risks are reduced. That dispersal of water through the soil means of course that if you want to grow plants well through a Mediterranean summer you have to grow them in pots. 'Well' but of course unnaturally: which could be for flowers and general green cheeriness, or, in my case, because you want to crop them for cuttings all summer long. I'm able to do the latter with plants in pots but for anything in the ground, forget it. Next year, I'm going to keep all my mother plants in pots.
A huge amount of irrigation is incredibly inefficient. Local methods for vegetables involve flooding channels around the vegetables, a methodology hardly changed since Roman times; most of the water probably goes straight back down underground again. More modern growers used drip irrigation, which gets the water straight to the base of the plant. Which is great for veg but not for permanent planting, which ideally you want to root down deep and extensively and look for water themselves.
A pelargonium in summer shut-down mode, leaves turned to reduce exposure the sun and the whole plant in a state of effective dormancy.
It's that desire to get plants to find their own water that should lie at the heart of establishing perennial and woody plants here. Apart from Olivier Filippi's books and some advice from Miguel Urquijo, I have not been able to access much useful information on minimal first year watering. “Grow to keep plants alive, not to make them look good” was a useful bit of advice from a California website.
So, I'm trying the following strategy, based on the idea that the larger the container the plant has occupied on planting out, the smaller will be it's interface with the soil in its new home, and therefore the more vulnerable it will be. Smaller plants almost always establish better and in conditions like this, so much more so.
Nearly all my perennials (as opposed to woody plants) went in, in March as 25mm plugs, from a mid-October seed sowing, which is as about as close to natural process as you can get. They grew really well through spring and in some cases still look quite fresh; most are dying back now, but I am not that bothered as they are all plants of Mediterranean or steppe habitats and should be used to this. They are not receiving a drop of water.
Woody plants in containers from 0.5 to 5L. These are all getting water, because there is no way their roots have made enough contact soil to get enough to stay alive, but I'm trying to keep it to a minimum, so the variation is enormous. It's a case of reading the stress signals. A whole new art. From spending some time lurking around natural vegetation here (mostly Cytisus, Cistus, Lavendula, Arbutus) I am getting used to the summer dormancy look. Don't worry if they start to drop leaves, so long as it is gradual, and there is a bit of life left at the top of the plant. Plants less obviously xerophytic have to wait until the first sign of wilting.
There are some things I feel I have to water twice a week, others have had nothing and still look fine, most get a few litres every week in mid 30s temperatures and less otherwise. Ideally one waters less frequently than this, but our soil is so dry with no humus or clay content, that I don’t see any alternative.
The things I hate are those that don't show stress signals but suddenly go totally dead lookgin: Nepeta tuberosa, a plant of extremely dry limestone (did it overextend itself in our relatively deep soil?), Ilex crenata, Pimelia ferruginea. The latter's demise reminded me of what an Australian said to me not so long ago about a lot of Australian plants having a death wish.
All the plants I bought from Olivier Filippi are looking either alive/coping or fine, some of the latter have not received a drop. Best is the 'grass substitute trial bed', which is the worst soil in the garden and has not had any water: Thymus, Achillea and lots of funny little grey creepy things which are new to me. Very encouraging.
We are going back to England in September for a month and a half. I shall be very interested to see how things look when we get back!
Achillea coarctica, July 26, not had a drop, looks splendid. These are the kind of thing we need lots of!