Thanks - I really appreciate your feedback, as I was just guessing. I always would use the "finger test" before watering something, of course. Glad to hear that 10 days is reasonable.

All of our rain is still coming across the Pacific in waves of huge storms, but it is going way North of us and drowning the Pacific North West. They have too much, we don't have enough - drat.

I hope this situation gets better - meanwhile, I at least have a plan.

In order to enrage everyone on any side of the discussion, the water utility is fighting with the "more more more housing" folks here, as they want to cut off any new water hookups for new development. Logical, but I don't think it will be allowed. They do not seem to understand that it is their job to provide water - they seem to think it is their job to prevent people from using water. No planning, no increase in storage (we actually are still getting plenty of rain, if you average it out - we get tremendous amounts some years, but since there is only 2 years worth of storage, when the dry years come, it creates a crisis), and no increase in water sources. Other big cities in CA have done MUCH better with way less actual rain. Well, a majority of the Board of the water utility is up for re-election (they have all been on the Board 20-25 years) next Nov, so lots of people are hoping to get rid of them. Can't wait.

Jackie

I'd probably water the 5 transplants in the ground weekly and not let them stress at all since they are such treasures. In our cool winter weather the pots really stay moist here too and 10 days are likely a fine interval. I have 5 large fleshy leaved limonium purezii that need more winter water. I water those probably every 5 days or so in the winter. All of these in summer heat need daily water. Of course, we are hotter in summer than you are, Jackie.

How would they know if you use your drip system???

They have lots of money for enforcement - one day I got a note on my front door from them that (back when they were allowing sprinklers, but only at night) at 3AM one of their inspectors had noticed a bit of runoff from one of our sprinklers. It was a warning, and officially said if it happened again there would be a $250 fine. I was OK with being notified, because when we turned on that sprinkler to check it, it did need adjusting. However, very creepy to think of them snooping around my house at 3AM. To answer your question, since any watering has been illegal during the day for months, I would not put it past them to have an inspector looking at peoples' water meters in the middle of the night, and if the house is dark, but the water meter is moving for a while, that probably means an irrigation system is running. Also of course they are encouraging neighbors to turn each other in. Sort of feels like many dictatorships I can think of. Need to vote them out. There are articles and letters to the editor in the local paper every day about how people think they are incompetent and extremists. In addition, they have been caught not following the public meeting laws re their Board meetings - sneaking them in private, etc., and claiming they can't allow the public in because they ask too many questions.

Jackie

I am concerned, because the ration of DWP water our little Mutual Water Company has been getting is being reduced to nothing. That means the water quality will be worse than it's been for several years. And I foresee rationing orders.

What bothers me about that last is that SOME OF US began cutting back our water use around 2017 -- and have not stopped that practice. While OTHER people here have gone on dumping water out of swimming pools and over-watering grass lawns until it runs off down the street. So . . . If they and we are told to cut back 15% NOW, the result will be far more devastating for us than for them.

We are surveying the hillside, to decide which roses will be sacrificed, and which we can save.

When your roses are blooming, you can use the spent blooms to tell you if the bush is getting enough water.

For blooms that are past their peak, bend the bud backwards at the slightly swollen spot where the abscission layer will form if the ovules in the bud weren't fertilized.

If the bush is getting enough moisture, the stem should snap with a single bend. (The Colonel said , when we discussed this, that it could take five wiggles to get roses to snap in the San Jose Heritage Garden).

Here, I used the ease of the snap to tell if the drip irrigation was working for a rose or not. Especially with own roots, different roses have different take-ups, and even in my kitchen window other plants have one water need in October with bright sun, and less in December with what appears to be the same sun (but it isn't, because it's going through a lot more atmosphere.)

Thank you stillanntn - I never thought of that. That is how I dead head roses (which is rarely), so it will be easy to tell.

Jeri - don't worry - around here there are some people who have been living on very little water (at their own choice, of course) since the bad drought we had in the 1970s! Consequently, all of the water districts have figured out that they cannot just demand individual % cutbacks. What they are doing here is just giving everyone a minimum amount of water, and then raising the price sky high if you use more. They cannot raise water "rates" without going through endless gyrations, so they are pretending it is not a price increase, but a fine.

Jackie

The proposed restrictions published in today's newspapers are strict . . . I guess . . . But they won't affect us one whit, because we're already doing those things. There is 0 runoff here. Every bit of water that's expended here STAYS here. IMO, no one but a blooming idiot would be washing a car with a hose that didn't have an automatic shutoff.

But we have neighbors who ALWAYS overwater their lush lawns, and dump water out of their swimming pool monthly. <GRRRRR>

This doesn't really help hand watering vs irrigation system, but it could give you a little more water to use for your roses without increasing your water bill. I'm originally from southern Arizona where there is a long practice of rainwater harvesting (installing big cisterns to fill for use later plus setting up ways to capture rain water run-off in your garden with earth works) plus graywater harvesting (laundry, bathroom sink and shower) to use in your garden. Many plants take graywater really well if you use the right kind of soaps and detergents.

I hope you pardon the librarian in me...here are a couple of good resources that I know of from when I lived in Tucson:

https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/

https://watershedmg.org/

It looks like there are organizations in California that focus on this work too (I don't have any experience with any of them, so I'm not recommending any), so maybe you already know what you need to know...but just in case this is helpful to anyone, I'm sharing here.

I'm so sorry that your water utility is making this all so stressful and punitive. It'd be awesome if they gave incentives to folks who installed water harvesting!

Thanks librarian_gardner. We do have a friend who put in a graywater system, and it was incredibly expensive. Also they told us that the City required a permit for it, but when they tried to get one, no one at the City had any idea what they were talking about, and people kept sending them to different departments, so eventually they gave up and put it in anyway.

Anyway, I just looked up the weather again, and they said to expect rain this coming Sat, Sun, and Mon. They have been doing that a lot without any rain showing up, but I always live in hope.

I'm sorry to hear that Jackie. I know that Arizona has made the law and permit process really easy....it might be the easiest state for harvesting both graywater and rainwater. I really hope the rest of the country follows suit. Water issues are going to hit us all in this new climate. It's incredibly hard to go through the process here in Oregon at the moment so I'm not going to do anything yet.

Not an answer to your immediate question, Jackie, but for the future you might consider installing a rain garden. In short it is a depression in your landscape that captures the water that falls on your property, keeping it there rather than sending it off to the storm drains and from there to the nearest body of water. In our case, that would be the SF Bay and Pacific Ocean. You would still have to irrigate - of course - but your soil would have more baseline water in it to start with. If you are curious, look up rain gardens. I took a day long workshop on the concept a couple of years ago. To me it seems simpler and cheaper than a full fledged graywater system or a roof water storage system.

Here we are doing some terracing following the loss of our big pine tree last spring. I'm thinking of digging some shallow undulations into the terraced areas in hopes that it will do some of this same thing.

The Rainwater Harvesting books by Brad Lancaster give some great suggestions about making rain gardens and using earthworks (depressions etc) to capture water into your property.

Thanks, everyone! Our garden is divided into several sub gardens, and any rain which hits them does not run off our property, so I guess that is sort of like rain gardens. The gardens are all separated from the driveway by curbs, and are usually lower than the driveway. The driveway is the only surface which does run off water into the storm drains (some of which comes from a large hill (with roads and houses all over it) behind out house, so it sort of transits our property on its way to the storm drains. Even some of that does go to the flower beds which are between the sidewalk and the street. We are only 6 feet above sea level, and about 4 blocks from San Francisco Bay, so in the past flooding has been more of an issue, and my DH has worked a lot in prior years to make sure most of the excess water coming from that hill will drain down the driveway, and that most of what actually falls on our property will stay in the beds.

Right now it is pouring down rain again (so far 12 hours and counting..), and we are expected to get 1-2 inches from this storm, so the real problem I have with water is in the Summer, when even when precipitation is "normal" in the Winter, we are guaranteed a normal period of a minimum of 6 months with no rain at all (none, nada).

Jackie

Rain here, too, I am happy to say. We got slightly over 3 inches. Add this to the 5 inches we got in October and we have now equaled what we got in last year's entire rain season, with the traditional peak rain months of January and February still ahead of us. I have been hoping very much to do some new planting this year in our revamped back garden. Without rain and permission to water, that cannot be done.

Let's hope for all of us for our varied reasons that we get decent rain and decent snowpack this year. All over the west there are versions of this wish this year.

It is what I for one want for Christmas this year.

So happy to get rain here on the edge of the LA Basin at 2000ft elevation. 4 inches since it started raining at 3am and it’s only 9:30am and still going. Annie Laurie McDowell on Multiflora roots gets all the runoff from the sidewalk along the side of the house and she is happy! Glendale also has a tiered system and the rates increase per unit of water used with 3 tiers. Then we have, on top of that, 5 drought phases with 1 being normal. Each drought phase jumps the water rates up as a “drought surcharge” instead of a fine so it feels less punitive. The drought surcharge is only 0.30 cents per HCF (748gal) in phase 2 and 0.45 cents in phase 3.

This reminds me of living in Vegas and the regular notices of overwatering or watering on the wrong days....expensive and to almost everyone, except to Casinos that used boat loads of water for irrigation and pools, showers, etc. Also, water was cheap, and I thought just a little rise in prices might cut down on the overwatering?

Then there was the recycled water systems used over many places in San Diego, usually municipal or business parks...the stench.....but I don't see how the rest of CA doesn't know about it...maybe the term needs to be "recycled water" instead of greywater???

Keep the mulch thick too. That really helps all summer long.