Wine Party

Because we go away every few months to visit my granddaughter and because we are gone for a week or more each time, and because it has not rained since we got a dusting of snow on March 23, and there is no rain in the forecast for another month . . . 

     . . . I have to come up with a way to water the patio plants I have in large pots. I bring the small pots inside when we are away and leave them in the bathtub, in an inch of standing water. That works.

Cuphea 'David Verity' in pinecone mulch. Do you see my watering system?

My neighbor is more than willing to come over and water the big pots that I can't move, but it's an imposition all the time and I wanted something I could just set up and leave.

So I got plant nannies. They are terracotta cones that you sink into the pot, and then add a water-filled wine bottled tipped into the cones. The bottle of water seeps into the terracotta and releases water slowly into the soil.

That's how that works. Plant nannies.

Now do you see my watering system for this big pot of cuphea? There it is, a bottle of Hess Select cabernet, watering the container slowly, slowly.

Glug, glug.

I put a nice red in the blueberry bush too. 

Blueberries like wine, no? It's acidic.

And then I put some plant nanny wine bottles next to new plants that my irrigation system doesn't really water well. The drip emitters will reach the roots of these new perennials as they get bigger, but right now, these little plants need some extra water at the roots while we are away, more than the irrigation system can deliver.

Another Hess cabernet wine varietal, watering a new coneflower

This tiny new Aronia shrub has been paired with an Oak Ridge red cabernet.

This pairing is nice.

Now, with overturned wine bottles studding my gardens and decorating my containers it looks like a wine party here. Bring the cheese, I'll have crackers. 

(one note: plant nannies are really meant for indoor houseplant use, or at least use in a shaded spot in a container. Out in the New Mexico sun, the dark bottles heat up, the water gets scalding, and I am probably slowly steam cooking my new plants from the roots up.)