Rain please!

Our area (and many others) started a hosepipe ban on Friday;  we are not allowed to water with a hose until it's lifted--probably not till autumn at the earliest.  On Thursday evening, the husband took up one of our 220 L water barrels--it usually lives under the garage gutter--and put it at the top of the allotment where the pots of cherry tomatoes are, and filled it up with the hose from the water supply at the bottom.  He also gave the whole plot a good soak, for about an hour.  

Now I'm watering up there with watering cans twice a day.  The daughter and I have a good system where she stays at the tap at the bottom of the allotment, filling up one can while I water with the other.  Much quicker than me doing it alone.  I use the barrel at the top for just the pots near it which should last me maybe two weeks;  possibly the son and I can refill it with the watering cans when it's empty. 

I also have planters at the bottom with more tomatoes and a few carrots;  in the ground I'm watering:  plum tomatoes twice a day;  leeks, pickling cucumbers, zucchini and squash once a day.  In-ground plants I'm not watering every day:  corn, beets, kohlrabi, purple sprouting broccoli, Brussels sprouts.  Not watering at all:  potatoes (digging some up every few days), snap peas (letting the remainder mature for seed), raspberries, artichokes, rhubarb, currants, gooseberries (all of these are finished for the year except a few artichokes).

At home watering isn't such an issue:  I'm there a lot more than I'm at the allotment!  I move the washing machine pipe to a different veg bed every day, I'm saving and reusing several liters of washing and cooking water every day, and I still have three water barrels fairly full of rain from a week and a half ago.  Twice a day I have to water my six pots of tomatoes, two pots of peppers and peach tree (in a large planter);  plus there are still some trays of seedlings on my patio table along with most of my houseplants on their summer holiday (my two remaining houseplants in my bathroom need shade--I collect their water in a bucket as my shower warms up).   Oh, and as my two ducks require fresh water daily, I reuse their two mucky tubs every morning too, when the son has replaces them with clean.

My allotment soil is full of organic matter to absorb water and well mulched to prevent it evaporating--my kitchen garden soil is too.  The plants I started early in the season such as beets, kohlrabi, etc, have been surviving fairly well on the sporadic rain because my soil isn't quite parched yet.  The cool-loving snap peas gave up flowering because of the heat but are still green and alive despite me not watering them at all;  actually I'm considering pulling them up to resow the bed with another batch of beets, but I would have to water these regularly until it rains again.  While I want lots more beets, I'm not sure I can keep them alive.  

Though I'm not yet desperate for it, I really really want some more rain--I can't believe I can actually write that:  this is usually a very soggy island!