Poorly chicken

[Daphne]

I think your heatwave is getting to us tomorrow as its forecast to be 36 from 26 today.  39 Fri & Sat, which is too hot.  I know I was whinging about cherries in earlier posts, but our neighbour invited us over to pick some (he has a mature orchard) but even his trees were pretty poor in terms of quantity and quality - I ended up stoning a whole bucketful (!) for the freezer and drying, they just aren't that good raw.  Then today we harvested our other cherry, which has white fruit.  The half of the tree which is in the sun is actually pretty good, ripe and sweet (earlier than usual) but the other half is still unpleasant.  We can't eat them quick enough, so I have frozen another 3 trays, and put more out to dry.   I may bottle some in our homemade plum brandy as well.

I have already lost some tomatoes, they have curled up and died - although my soil is stony, even it is getting a pan on top, which isn't good for the feeder roots.  We have had a number of good meals from the strawbs, but they haven't been properly flavourful till now, they seem to need serious amounts of sun. The peaches are on the edge of being ready, plus we will have some apricots although they are still green and right at the top of the tree.  You mentioned perhaps going no dig, and just concentrating on the toms, I think its a good plan.  I am so conscious of water/fire/resources that unless something is a perennial or a really good doer in terms of not needing too much water/or is a very heavy yielder that I can store, I just don't plant it anymore.

Its good news about your maincrop spuds though!  I have to say my favourite thing is still the unexpected new potatoes cropping up in the compost heap.  Is this something you could try, it would be more friable than your soil? Or maybe next year try planting on top and using the heap as a hot bed for pineapple, squash or melon?

[Beantree]

Up to now we have been moving the compost heap every year to kill patches of bad weeds. On the second year we plant courgettes on them, which works well. But they are a lot of work to keep weed free and then harvest the compost, dig over and seed with grass. This year we are doing wild flowers on a patch but it's taken over 20 hours to prepare the bed! Next year we will have permanent compost bays to reduce our workload considerably, because most of the weed patches have gone and we've found that a covering of neat chicken poo does a good job with encouraging the natural grasses which smother the weeds anyway.

[mullethunter]

Well. Interesting year in the veg garden / greenhouse. After the heat of last week it feels like autumn at the moment!

I had my best ever harvest of peas (Early Onward) - I usually only get enough to eat them as I pass by, but I had a few actual meals with them this year. I think because it was dry when I planted them out so they got well established without getting munched by snails. But, I’ve pulled the plants up now because they weren’t on my watering list so they’ve shrivelled and died.

The new (second early - Jazzy and Ratte) potatoes are very good. The tops have pretty much completely died now because they’re another thing I haven’t watered but I think the dry has actually helped because it’s stopped them getting blight.

The autumn planted red onions were hopeless - tiny and most bolted.

The brassicas which I’ve netted with insect mesh for the first time are looking good despite not being watered. The Cavolo Nero (Black Magic - so much better than Nero di Toscana) is doing brilliantly and looks perfect, the summer cabbages (Greyhound) look cabbage shaped but I haven’t poked them to see if they have solid hearts. The Brussels sprout (Trafalgar and Jade Cross) and Sprouting Broccoli plants are looking good. Fingers crossed the mesh continues to keep the butterflies out.

The leeks (Musselburgh) and parsnips (Gladiator) are looking OK but not great, but the seed sown brown onions (Bedfordshire Chaampion) are doing well. None of them are getting watered regularly either.

The beans are the only things in the veg garden that are getting regularly watered and fed, they’re looking great and are just starting to produce (Runners I can’t remember the variety but some red and some white flowered; dwarf French amethyst).

In the greenhouses which are getting watered every evening I’ve had a great crop of strawberries (no idea of the variety - they were here before me!), carrots (Nantes 5 - can’t seem to grow them outdoors) and cos lettuce. The mini munch cucumbers are going great guns but the full sized cucumber is doing nothing 🤷‍♀️One of the sweet pepper plants looks like it’s about to have lots of flowers while the other is just doing nothing, and that’s the story with the tomatoes too. About two thirds of the plants (Sungold, Crimson Cherry and Crimson Crush) are doing well and setting reasonable amounts of fruit, but the other plants are going pale and dying - no idea why. 
 

Still to come in the bit of the potato bd now empty, I’m trying sweetcorn for the first time - 9 plants in a grid - look healthy but only about 18 inches tall so far so maybe too late. And I’ve underplanted them with squash which are growing well and flowering but don’t seem to be developing any fruit yet.

I love the warm weather but the lack of rain is a problem now - my water butts are all empty so I’m working on a way to capture our grey water for watering.

[Daphne]

I think we've all had unusual years - but yours is so much more successful than mine, MT!

I am about to pull up one bed of toms, it hasn't done anything, possibly because I didn't put enough goodness back into the raised bed, its a shame as these were my big beefheart type.  The cherry toms are also pathetic in volume compared to last year, but they taste good, almost like a roast tomato!  I expect yours have succeeded because they mature earlier, perhaps before you got seriously hit by the sun.  My 3rd bed of toms is being grown only for passata/sauce - a prolific variety but not too much flavour.  Some of my branches are going brown, I can see that some of my watering is too vigorous. If I use a hose the feeder roots can get exposed - I obviously didn't plant them deep enough.   All round, not the best year for tomatoes.  I may have to rest them a year.

I have some espelette peppers grown from seed, with fruit on (I think they are chilis really, rather than peppers, very small and quite spicy) and some herbs (parsley seems remarkably heat tolerant) and that's it on the success front, although I am trying to keep the strawbs alive through this heat, as they have a great taste. I can see little flowers where I water so I hope for a second crop. Plums = everyone had very small crops, apricots = early, then fell and birds/wasps got them, peaches - tasty but small crops.  The olives are practically non existent, both at home and at the land, and the grapes are already turning so we should get some sort of crop, but I am guessing it will be small.

In a way it has been easy to abandon crops because the conditions are so bad.  I did water the mature plum trees before they cropped, and I am watering the apple on the basis it is bearing some fruit and its tasty so its worth it.  My friends and I have an elementary grey water system - they unload washing up bowls etc into buckets to water in the evening, and I have a series of watering cans/5l water containers in all rooms with taps!  I think rigging up something from the washing machine/shower is beyond us, although I do collect the water as it heats up.

I am pinning my faith on green leafy veg in autumn/winter - your tip about cavalo nero is useful, I find Nero di T to be useless as well, though it may be my conditions. I can't grow sweetcorn (too hot, too much irrigation required), so if they don't succeed for you that may be part of the reason.  You still have time for them to do their thing, they are normally ready in Sept, and squashes are deffo late.

I saw my first black (cultivated) blackberry today!

 

[Beantree]

We are one of the few places without serious drought restrictions, but at this stage just about all the beds are empty so water usage for them is 5 cans a day. Our water is very poor quality and officially undrinkable. Aside from the high level of Chlorine which makes my eyes water, it has a very high pesticide content. We spend more on drinking water than we use for everything else. What's annoying is what we grow can't be considered organic.

Onions were the worst year we've had. Too hot too early and half didn't develop. The potatoes (Desiree) were a good crop spoilt by scab. The bed with the least earthing up was worst affected by far, so it must be due to the soil temperature, despite the leaf mulch on the South face. Everything just stops growing when the temperature is too high, so the potatoes are late as are the carrots and beetroot.

We're going to try French beans at the end of September. It should be cooler and wetter then and they are cropped and removed in 6 weeks, so well before the frosts. They freeze well and now we have a vacuum bagger they should be even better.

[Daphne]

The hosepipe ban in UK effects many of my friends/family and made me realise just how difficult it would be here if we had one.  In the heat it is incredibly hard work to carry cans from the house to different parts of the garden.  We have a big mist this morning which will clear later, its cool enough for a cardi and I am taking the opportunity to give the mature citrus and other fruit trees a deep water which they get about once a month to help the fruit grow.  Even though its cool I'd be pretty exhausted by the time I'd done all of them, with a can.

Pulled up all my pathetic toms, just got one bed left.  I met someone yesterday who has a borehole and she said she was virtually self sufficient, even this summer.  Grrr.

On the plus side, I planted some ginger about 6 weeks ago and its shooting up to about 4 inches, in pots, in the shade.   I also gave a friend some already gone over mint without roots which she has rooted in water, then planted it in shade, watered it, and it already looks green and healthy and rampant.

[Beantree]

A news report this morning was about the use of 'ollas' (pronounced 'oyas'), which reduce water consumption by 70% and have been used by the Mayans thousands of years ago. They are porous pots with lids that are buried in the ground by your vegetables then the whole area around is covered in a mulch. You fill the pots with water and it slowly leaks into the soil under the protective mulch. The key is to get the porosity right and I can see a lot will depend on your soil, but a great idea nevertheless. I bet they are expensive.

[Daphne]

I remember a friend telling me about these, I'd forgotten.  Given terracotta pots are cheap as chips here, I could give it a go, nothing to lose.  Many old houses in need of tlc still have their original enormous clay pots for keeping wine, water and olive oil in, in the adega.  Sometimes these are half buried in stone/earth to keep them extra cool.  I have never quite understood how they work as you must have to ladle out the liquid contents, you can't move the jars.  By the same token you often see 5l water containers outside very old terraced houses in villages/towns so they are warmed by the sun, enough for washing up/yourself.  In the old days nobody had running water, and some still don't, you go to the communal 'fonte' to get cold water, and so to heat it you would have to light a fire.  In some out of the way villages there is a still a communal laundry, a massive shallow water tank under cover with 'washboards' now made of concrete.  As I've typed all this I realise everyone who uses them must wash laundry in cold water.

[Beantree]

I remember using upturned 2L plastic bottles here, with the bottom cut off, to water the courgettes when we grew them in the vegetable plot (now they are on the compost heap). So the watering can fills them and it leaks at root level rather than wetting the surface layer. We have a large number of 5L bottles here as a result of buying in water to drink and perhaps I could try them on a potato row with one between each seed and water less often. They would become buried at the earthing up stage, so the only extra work will be cutting the bottles. It will also suppress weed growth on the surface, unless it rains of course, which is becoming increasingly unlikely.

Crisis meeting today to discuss what will become the driest Summer ever in France and the worst drought. 100 communes have no tap water now and have to fetch it from water tankers parked in the village square. Crops are failing and we are lucky that most of ours are out. Kiwis are losing their leaves, which means the sun will burn the fruit (the little we have after the severe late frost in April which killed the flowers) as it did last year. Far too much watering to save them.

[Daphne]

I was at a friends house yesterday, she has a largish, productive kiwi, still very green leaves.  I guess its all to do with location/access to ground water.  Hers is next to a driveway - maybe this shades the roots?  OH is in the UK and reports that everywhere is brown.  I spoke to another friend yesterday (UK) and she said her garden is still green - possibly because she hasn't mown since May.  I quite like the fact that everywhere is brown here, but because locals grow for shade there is also lot of evergreen in gardens - citrus, and things like loquat with huge leaves.  The topfruit trees are suffering though.  I have planted oleanders/agapanthus as they are drought tolerant and provide colour, plus we have camellia (evergreen) and olives along with the citrus and grapes, so its not too barren looking, although we also have large agave type things which are pretty desert like.

I hope you don't suffer too badly where you are. It is grim. I still find it odd that the UK is getting on for being as badly hit as southern Europe as far as water is concerned.

[Beantree]

It's been a terrible season and 10 weeks now without much rain; some lakes and rivers are dry and they are trying to save the fish. There is a hosepipe ban in force but we have managed to pump water (via a hosepipe) to our wild flower patch from a 1000L rainwater butt which keeps gathering a bit from the roof. Despite that I decided to put in some French beans yesterday afternoon. It's a 7 metre bed that I've been watering daily for a week to try and get the soil soft enough to hoe and I put a seed in every 3". So a big surprise yesterday evening when we had a small thunderstorm. Just checked the bed to look for beans that had floated to the top and found six which had ALREADY SPROUTED ROOTS!!! These should be producing in 8 weeks and be finished in 10, before the frosts. If it works I'll do this again next year.

[Valkyrie]

Been hit and miss this year.  Compost was bad - full of fungus gnats which filled the dining room as I had the propagator on the table.  I had 30 bags delivered and every one was full of them.  As a result they damaged the roots of the seedlings and I have no idea why or how, but some were intent on surviving and put out enough roots to cope.  I eventually got new compost and transplanted everything by emptying the compost and washing the roots.  Surprisingly those things that don't like root disturbance were delighted with the new stuff.  As a result of all that, planting out was delayed.  I also had another 30 bags from the same company for the outside veg patch.  Both indoor and outdoor composts were wool and bracken, but this year they "changed" it.  I think they bagged it up before having a chance to rot down.  I'd transplanted a lovely well-rooted rose cutting - and within a week it was dead.  It also formed a hard crust on the top so that it was hard for seeds to break through.  Lost a lot of beans that way.  Luckily the runners were planted later, I fixed up a frame and anchored it down, and the beans were great.  Too hot at some stage so I sprayed the flowers and leaves at night.  The flowers have been beautiful.  To hedge my bets against the wind, I also grew dwarf runners.  They were OK, but I do prefer the longer pods.  I've not noticed many blackfly - only seen 2 ladybirds too!  Potatoes hit and miss where some of the tubers didn't grow at all, while some went crazy.  The early and second earlies were late while the maincrop romped away.  Plenty of growth above ground, not so many potatoes.  But even so there were some whoppers!  I decided it was a sort of success because if I end up with more potatoes than I plant then all well and good.  Most have been processed and frozen.

The winter onion sets were fantastic.  The maincrop very poor.  But we have had plenty to eat fresh and we have dehydrated most.  Garlic was so so.  The brassicas were awful, everything bolted.  I had no parsnips so put squash in that bed.  Yacon is growing OK but not as big as I'd expected.  Broad beans were good, saved seeds because they have withstood awful weather and then baking heat.  The dwarf French beans have had several bashes at germinating, they sort of did OK eventually, but not as good as in previous years and now the slugs are chomping at them.  Celeriac, tried a new variety, not performing well so I'm going back to Prinz. 

A lot of the beds have been covered with cardboard after the weeds and couch grass took a hold last year with all the wet.  We made deep beds over winter and we also have wood chip paths (second attempt, this time with weed suppressant fabric underneath) which the slugs love, the voles not so much unless it is dry.  No nests underneath!  I've been rotating with the few beds that are clear of weeds.  This year the weeding has been kept up and easily sorted.  A few couch grass wannabe big clumps, but the constant pulling has weakened them, plus the mulch.  Leeks are in and I'm waiting for beetroot to bulk up.  Spinach is looking fine too.

 The cats have now discovered the voles are great toys and come down with me to the veg patch.  Merlin now wanders up unaccompanied to do his own thing.  Smokey more the fraidy cat and prefers hunting closer to home.  We also have had a barn owl, tawny owl, the buzzards and a kestrel keeping down the population this year.  Hay was good and I am better with the scythe, so a good store.  

After the delayed start in the greenhouse, the tomatoes are finally doing well and we've frozen a lot.  The sun dried ones not performed quite as well - they are usually triffids, but I put that down to old seed and the pest struggle.  We've had peppers this year and lots of aubergines.  Carrots aplenty in between the tomatoes, and gherkins.  I might have overdone the sowing there - they all came up (in the good compost) and we have run out of room in the fridge where HRH has been pickling them!  

Again swings and roundabouts.  The builder has dug out an area for a future polytunnel, but if HRH keeps dragging his heels while the price keeps going up.  Already over £2000 more than it was when I first looked - he drives me crazy!  

And something completely different - we've had swallows nesting in the barn.  They've just had their second lot of babies and yesterday there were so many gathering on the power lines.  I counted over 50 and there were more flying around.  I guess as it was bad with the old ex-hurricane and rainy and windy before that, they had to wait to build up their little bodies to cope with the migration.  I've seen some today, so I guess tomorrow they'll have gone while the weather is stable.  Water not quite a problem here, although we did get a bit close to the mark with our saved water!  Our pond almost dried up, but it needs a clear out - we seem to have a very invasive plant in there - the stems were very much enjoyed by next door's cat - a bit like catnip.  Ours aren't bothered with catnip or the plant.  But even so, we've had lovely emerald dragonflies and the newts are still about.  Frogspawn was not good in spite of huge clumps and so not one tadpole this year.  Something ate it all.  

I was given money from MIL for my birthday so I bought a mulberry tree.  I'm going to be making a food forest and that will be the start of it.  Assuming we are still around to enjoy it all.  

Fingers crossed for a successful bean crop Beanie!  xxx

 

[Valkyrie]

Update and he doesn't do forum posts.  We have ordered our polytunnel!  LOL!  Must have been telepathy - and it has gone up £100 since yesterday!  I hinted earlier that it wasn't going down in the current climate, so if he'd got his finger out it wouldn't have hurt the budget so much!  But at least I can grow a decent amount of veg under protective coverings.

[Daphne]

You certainly have been busy!  It sounds very bad luck on the compost though, expensive as well as infuriating.  I haven't heard of fungus gnats, but I have had clouds of gnats before now when trying to germinate things in a heated propagator, and the capping problem.  Its just demoralising, as you tend to blame yourself rather than the materials.  You did well with your toms, mine were bad, I had to cook them all as the skins were so tough from lack of water. I prefer a bigger bean as well, in the UK my neighbour had great success with a purple podded one in his polytunnel, plus early parsley and yellow cherry toms.  Although I have managed to grow parsley very well here, despite the heat, it hasn't all bolted and is still going well, which has surprised me a bit.

We picked an awful lot of grapes, enough to make around 100 litres of wine!  But we won't bother with olives, except for bottling some for eating, the crop looks tiny.  Overall, this has been a year to forget for most things, because of the lack of water in winter/spring.  We have just had 3 days of downpours, which have led to floods, and because we had bad fires 2 years ago a lot of trees are down as their roots are dead.

On the bright side, I bought OH a mulberry about 15 years ago.  It looked the same size for about 5 years, and only starting bearing enough fruit for jam about 10 years ago.  This summer I was sent a photo, it has developed into a proper tree (still not fully grown though) and I have been given a jar of jam from it!

[Valkyrie]

How lovely getting some jam after all this time!  And great news about your grapes too!  This year we have an apple glut - I've never seen so many on all the trees.  I felt sure they would fail this year as we had the monsoons when they started to flower, so bees were scarce!  HRH is going house/cat sitting for our daughter so will not be around for making apple juice - hopefully our favourites will be fine - and the weather is still good to work outside with that sticky mess - and cranky wasps. Should have had a good walnut year too, but it was badly affected by the weather so like last year, few and far between and I'll be watching out for those squirrels who don't share!  Hedgerow plants have been good.  Not sure there are any cob nuts left though!  I forgot all about the peas.  I sowed Kelvedon Wonder in the greenhouse and they romped and planted out after the wet spell had passed and the ground was a little more dry so the slugs wouldn't pounce.  We've had some nice peas, I didn't have that many as it was an experiment, but I saved seed there too.  A bit like the beans, small framework, but as it was successful I'll do more next year - plus I've got some sugar snaps - I feel having to shell the peas is such a waste of time and far better to scoff the lot!

Yes, I'd not known about gnats before, having referred to them as thrips, but I had a good rummage on the search engines and well, yep, it was those little pests!

I'm leaning towards herbals and was surprised to find out that plantain is one of the best plants to have for all manner of maladies without any side effects.  It seems to understand what ails you and assists - a cure all!  Seeing as there is a field full of the things, mainly long leaved, but we do have some broad leaved plants around, I'm going to collect the leaves for tea.  I've tested before, it isn't unpleasant, slightly lettuce flavoured and HRH has left the dehydrator out for me so I can go to town with them.  It's also great for poultices and I've found it is far better than dock leaves for nettle stings.  

Also testing other weeds for food.  I've found garlic mustard is delicious!  Cow parsley is aniseedy celery - making sure it isn't hemlock!  But fortunately no hemlock and all cow parsley, we have the pinky/purple stems for the most part.  I didn't realise you could also eat hogweed, but bland if raw, tasty if cooked. Apparently.  Something to try next year.  I discovered clover is edible.  Not impressed, I'd have to be desperate, but dandelions are still not going on my menu ever!

Yeah, trouble with prolonged dry weather means when it does rain, it really lets rip and then it doesn't sink in, it runs off with the flooding as a result.  

We also have electricity in the greenhouse (well, energy permitting) so I can use the propagator in there instead of in the house.  Oooh and I grew some turmeric but one of the cats took a liking to the spiky grass-like spears and chomped the tops off.  With the gnats they didn't stand a chance.  On the other hand the ginger is in the greenhouse and romping away.  I gather the leaves are also edible with a slight ginger taste, so I'll be making tea from some of those too!

And I hear a furball being produced - yuk.  Oh well better clean up!  Nighty night

xxx

[mullethunter]

Ups and downs in Cornwall too. I’ll do a proper round up when I’ve got more time but my biggest success is my sweetcorn. I only did it as an experiment to put something in when I dug the first potatoes, and it’s been a very surprising and SO delicious success 😋

[Valkyrie]

Looks super.  Still waiting on my ones.

[Daphne]

Looks really really good!!!

[Beantree]

That looks delicious @mullethunter. I wanted to grow some here, but until our new Portuguese Laurel hedge is better established (planted 4 years ago) they would possibly just get blown over.  i was wiling to take that chance, but was put off by the cost of the seeds; €5 for 6!!!

[Daphne]

That's ridiculous!  As sweetcorn is wind pollinated you should be OK without much protection, but you could put up a temporary barrier to filter the wind once the cobs are growing to protect the tall plants if you needed.  I think you can get shorter varities now as well, could somebody bring you some seeds?

We had a laurel hedge in the UK, it probably took 8-10 years to become properly established (ie ft high needing regular pruning rather than individual bushes needing dealing with).  After that it became huge (like 10ft tall and very thick, needing a serious haircut every year).  We were on a good layer of fertile clay over subsoil.  However, it became a lovely barrier giving total privacy and helped transform a very windy garden into a much stiller place.

[Beantree]

That's a good idea @Daphne. We have someone who comes over regularly and she would be happy to bring some seeds.

We have a well established standard Laurel hedge on the East side of the veg plot. It takes up a lot of time trimming it and lots of trips to the tip to get rid of the cuttings. There are only 4 bushes in it and I have no idea why it was put there in the first place. We've put a Portuguese Laurel on the West side as a wind break. It's supposed to be very slow growing reaching just 2 metres in height when fully grown (about 120cm now). We put 18 plants in a 15 metre row and they still haven't quite closed the gaps. Hopefully it won't need pruning at all?

[Daphne]

Well, I'm afraid if my experience is anything to go by, it will.  The bushes were planted in our garden before we moved in.  Maybe 8-10 bushes along one 15 metre row, about a metre high, and about 15-20 along the other longer side, perhaps 30m-40m, so more widely spaced than yours. It was slow growing to start, they spread horizontally rather than up, but once they joined together (probably 10 years) they just all grew and grew upwards.  I could manage them to start with, but then we got a gardener in because we had 2 x 200ft boundaries and it got too much (I had native hedging everywhere else).  He left them at 3m high and thick, and cut with some sort of hedge trimmer, I think once a year, but possibly twice.  They flowered and were good for the bees and were as tough as old boots, no die back or anything and obviously evergreen.  They bordered grass so no problems of depleting the soil, although they crowded out roses and clematis that were in the original gaps.

However, if your conditions are tougher, growth will be slower.  My garden had been worked for 150 years in parts, and was reclaimed pastureland and pretty fertile in other places.

[Beantree]

Well I hope our hedge doesn't grow too strong @Daphne, because we are trying to reduce our workload, not increase it. Our land is the poorest I could ever have imagined though. A field vole decided to burrow around one of the plants and in desperation to keep it alive I packed all the holes with our compost. As a result it is the strongest of all by far. The leaves are twice the size and much greener; the others all look a bit sick, but they have survived the 10 week drought, unlike our grass which may all need re-seeding? Been doing some deep digging and the ground is bone dry 2' down!

French beans are starting to show with the stems on some above the soil level, but no leaves yet.

[mullethunter]

On 9/19/2022 at 10:40 AM, Beantree said:

i was wiling to take that chance, but was put off by the cost of the seeds; €5 for 6!!!

Oh wow!! I didn’t pay anything like that! Something like £3 for a packet of 50 or so seeds.

I only grew 9 plants and have so far had 5 really good cobs. Most of he plants have a second but I’ll be surprised if that one does anything.

A storm blew half the plants over but the cobs were almost ready then so it doesn’t seem to have done them any harm.

I gave them a helping hand for pollinating by giving them a good shake in each other’s direction and pulling some anthers off and sticking them to other plants.

[Beantree]

Had a dozen or so bean plants with leaves up this morning (8 days after planting the seeds). Looking at the rest we may have a 100% germination rate, BUT one has been eaten presumably by a lizard, because the ground is very dry and there is no slime trail. I've taken it out and put another seed in the same spot and am hoping we don't lose too many more. Heading for a long wet spell starting Saturday, so hopefully no need to water them for much longer. We still have bees coming to the few flowers around here so pollination shouldn't be an issue.