All gardeners know that water evaporates from the garden during hot dry spells.  We put it on and in no time at all it has evaporated into thin air. We go to a great deal of trouble to reduce this loss of water by watering at the coolest time of the day to avoid losing water to the air, and by mulching  the plants to provide an insulating layer of compost. Commercial growers will often lay hundreds of yards of polythene sheeting between their rows of plants in order to reduce water loss to the atmosphere.

So what happens to this water? Well the fact of the matter is that it is held in the air as water vapour, and eventually we get it back again. We get it back again in the form of early morning mist or fog or in the form of dew. Mist and dew is just the reverse of evaporation. We call it ‘condensation.’

During sunny days the warm air holds more water (vapour) taken from your garden than it does on cool days. When warm sunny days are followed by clear cool nights the air holds less water vapour, and that is when we get it back again in the form of heavy dew and early morning mist. Just a case of mother nature returning to the ground the water she took from it during the day.

I hope that this has not been too complicated.

Whatever the poets have said about dew (and it is a great deal) romantic readers will agree there is nothing so delightful as walking in bare feet through dew-covered grass. Others will find that dew-soaked trousers are not quite the thing for school or the office or Sunday morning at church.  And naturally plants love a heavy dew, and you may have noticed that after a longish spell of dry sunny weather the early morning drenching of dew seems to invigorate them. Plants that have languished for weeks, and hung their heads and looked unutterably miserable suddenly take an interest in life and perk up.

Growing in raised beds

There is a great deal of merit in growing plants above the general ground level because the heavy rain we have can so easily cause local flooding. Raised beds can be as narrow as a yard with sufficient space left between them to provide a working pathway. Vegetables can be planted closer using this method as the need to walk and work between rows is reduced.  Except for the essential soil preparation you need to do when getting ready to plant, such as double or single digging, there is no need to walk on the beds at all.

Weeding, hoeing, planting and harvesting can all be done from the working paths between the beds, and these paths can be made into all weather pathways by the use of broken brick or some other suitable material which will help to keep your feet dry. Not all gardeners agree with raised-bed cultivation, but I can tell you that in a climate such as Guyana’s the arguments in favour of them outweigh the arguments against them. By far.

Until next week may your God go with you wherever you may be.