Hmmm..not enough water

After the rains of the last 2 weeks, the roses in the front garden beds have come alive again. I honestly thought several of them had died, but luckily appears that they were just heavily dormant.

I am never quite sure how much water to apply to the roses in the dry season and it appears that I was under-watering by a fair degree, at least in this one particular bed. The soaker hose system was working, but the plants clearly weren't getting enough moisture. I have been watering by time in this bed, but I think I am going to have to invent a way to measure the outflow from the soaker hose in a more scientific fashion so I don't let things get so bad when Summer rolls around again.

I am thinking something along the lines of putting a pie pan under one section of the hose and measuring how much water is collected in a certain number of minutes. Does anyone out there have experience with this type of problem? Leave a comment below and let me know what you did?