I'm looking for some plant recommendations for a rather specific situation.
I have a small vegetable garden in West Texas where it is very hot and dry. I water deeply about once a week with a soaker hose buried under mulch.
Something, likely my trowel or hoe, put a hole in my soaker hose in one spot. Now, I know soaker hoses are cheap, but I'm kind of nutty about not spending more money if I can find another solution, regardless how zany it is.
My solution was to wrap the punctured section of the hose with an old cloth and bury it under a small mound of soil. Then I circled the mound with rocks to minimize soil loss. When the water is on, there is still plenty of water flowing out, flooding the mound. But between waterings this spot dries out completely (though it isn't covered in mulch yet, as I haven't planted it up).
So I'm looking for a plant that can take the heat and drought, but can stand the flooding that it will get on watering day. An herb would be nice, or some other beneficial companion plant to the veggie patch. Of course, a veggie would be welcome here too.
The mound is about 16" in diameter.
When I start working again in about a month, I may be more willing to spend some money to replace or mend the hose. Even still, I like the way happy accidents and weird solutions shape my garden. So unless there is just something insanely wrong with this approach, I'd like to go with it.
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rainbowgardener
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 25279
- Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
- Location: TN/GA 7b
Fixing the leak seems much the easier way, but just for the challenge of it, I tried to find plants that would work.
Some varieties of rice are flood and drought tolerant.
Flowering plants that would tolerate these conditions include orange butterfly weed, coreopsis, baptisia, mountain mint. Or look up plants for rain gardens.
Rain gardens are basically catchment areas for rainwater, captured from a downspout. So like your spot, they get very wet when it rains and then dry out. So the rain garden people know a lot about what works for those areas.
Some varieties of rice are flood and drought tolerant.
Flowering plants that would tolerate these conditions include orange butterfly weed, coreopsis, baptisia, mountain mint. Or look up plants for rain gardens.
Rain gardens are basically catchment areas for rainwater, captured from a downspout. So like your spot, they get very wet when it rains and then dry out. So the rain garden people know a lot about what works for those areas.