Over the past three months or so, we haven’t had much in the way of rain. There has been a bit here and a bit there, but never enough to fully soak the ground through properly. That has now changed, which is good!

As the storm is still sweeping over Sydney and our home in the northern suburbs, we have had 25.7mm over the past half an hour or so, with a fair amount still to come according to the rain radar.

While I don’t want constant rain for days at a time, I do like a decent amount of rain in one go here and there. The main reason is that rain always soaks through the oil more thoroughly than any form of watering I would, or could do, for plants. It has been raining from the sky for millions of years-plants and soils have evolved to deal with this best, while we humans have been around for the blink of an eye by comparison!

When it rains, it means I have to do less watering at work and home too. This is never a bad thing. Watering always needs more time than you think to allow the water to soak through the soil profile-five minutes with a hose over the whole garden is not the right way to do it. A garden would need an hours good, deep watering a couple of days a week to be of any benefit at all-this gets the water deep into the soil and this encourages plant roots to grow deeper into the soil. This has the added benefit of helping to protect plants from drought conditions-the deeper the plant roots, the more water they can find.

From a rather wet and soggy Sydney with a good light show, I wish you a happy and productive week.