My weed book says dandelions improve the soil because their roots open it up. Sometimes when I get behind on weeding, and I go in and hoe the weeds, I turn them over and hope I'm adding compost. That works if I don't let the weeds get to the seeding stage.
We get an average of 30 inches of rain a year, and May and June are the rainiest months. The problem is, our rain falls fast and hard. A 3" rain that falls in 1 hour isn't much good to the plants. We're now in a weather pattern of rain falling at night, which brings on blackspot in the roses.
Last summer, we were remodeling the house and I had a drywall guy here who was somewhat dyslexic. He used my outdoor spigot to wash his tools, and carefully reconnected my soaker hose with the "y" connector. Two days later, I noticed water on our gravel driveway. I found the drip lines that run through a normally xeric shrub bed had been on for 2 days. All the shrubs, trees and perennials in that bed were looking pretty happy! That was in the middle of our heat wave of 108 temps. that particular mistake saved those trees, i'm sure. I lost most of the arborvitae (green giants) in other areas of the yard, but everything in that 250' border survived. The really good news is that the well didn't go dry. When I first found out, I was pretty upset with the worker because I didn't know if extended use like that could damage the pump. This year, I will not be afraid to water when the plant need it. Once I get ahead on finances, i'm going to set up a well just for irrigation, so I don't have to worry about losing the household water (and geothermal air conditioning water source) if I need to keep plants alive.
