WOWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE SPIKE!!! THANK YOU!!!

This will be a SURPRISE and a welcome one for many people!!!!

Spike,

You're the best!!!!!!!!!

Newt

Just read that 49% of the lower fortyeight are in the worst drought for decades - maybe since dustbowl days? This is timely. Thanks, Spike. Now who will post with a technique to bring rain?

I've watered flowers and veggie gardens now 26 times this summer due to the terrible drought here!

Some things just can not survive this terrible 102 - 104 to 115 degree weather and humidty every day after day. A few of my things have literally "cooked" in the sun in spite of watering.

Daisy, Coreopsis, Zinnias, 4 o'clock, sundrops, tall Phlox all seem to be doing well.

Sweet corn looks terrible! I may have nubbins if that - disgusting with fighting all the bugs, etc. this year.

It's so dry & humid here you can't even spit!

I am just a mile away from Ground Zero. I have watched at least a dozen street trees dying or dead. We have water restrictions. My petunias,marigolds,coleus and others. The only plant that is surviving, is my mums. They are not in bloom yet but they look good. The West Village, where I live, always puts out small yard and window box displays, this year is a heartbreaker for the gardens. I went over to Brooklyn Botanic Garden. They have their own supply of well water. Their stuff looks fine. Charlie

We have not had much rain, but my garden is doing great because I use the Ruth Stout method. I mulch, mulch, mulch and have not watered all summer. (Some bees started up a nest in my garden hose that is enclosed in it's own case). Mulch is also good if there is a big down-pour because it keeps the plants and seeds from getting drowned out. After 8 years of mulching I'm convinced one can grow vegetables and flowers just about anywhere using the mulch method. My mulch consists of straw, marsh hay, maple leaves, grass and even weeds and parts of raw wool tossed away while carding. NEVER plastic.Mulch keeps the weeds from sprouting and if you want, you can put newspaper under the mulch. Also grow potatoes in mulch, just toss them on the ground and keep covered with mulch. Don't have to dig potatoes. Don't have to cultivate and after a short time the ground is so nice and soft and full of earthworms who add their own help to the garden. Put the vegetable clipping from the kitchen under the mulch and you don't need a compost pile. It's so simple, I wish I would have known about it years ago when I had a really big garden and canned alot. Barb

I live in Denver and have a balcony garden. The drought here has been extremely severe, and the water officials are saying that if we don't have heavy snow this winter all outdoor watering will be outlawed next year -- including our football stadium, all the golf courses, etc.

I personally haven't had a problem, since I'm allowed to water my plants on the balcony, but our trees are drying up, just like the ones in CharlieCityGarden's post. A number have lost all their leaves. It's heartbreaking to see. We live in a high desert area, so anything we have here that aren't native depend on artificial irrigation.

The strange thing is that it's so widespread...

Has anyone tried soil moist? I've had great luck with it..I don't have a deep well and Aug and Sept have to haul my water from town.. It's cut my chores in half. Rainbow

Gi'day all,
Things here in northeastern Australia are much the same. Weather is MUCH warmer than usual(up to 90o F) and remember we are in the middle/end of our winter !!! Frosts have also been the worst I can remember which is ,of course, not caused by the cold but by the rapid warm up in the morning after a cold night. Our lake totals 12 megalitres and is down to one meg.Our heavy mulching decision around the house and 2000sq metre vegie garden made 18 months ago(40 cubic meters) has helped greatly but if we don't get some rain over our "wet" at x-mas we will haved drained the lake and that will be it for the garden.

I live in the high desert in northern Nevada, so drought is pretty much a way of life. We have watering restrictions every year, drought or not. But this last year has been VERY dry. I believe last year's precipitation was around 2-1/2". At my house that all came in one afternoon in a flash flood. And so far this year we haven't had much, either. This spring we had .02" of rain one day, and the local news called it "a weather event".

Many well established trees and shrubs in my area have already died; many more show signs of severe stress. Establishing new plants has been tough, to say the least. Even the sagebrush looks somewhat haggard.

I'm looking forward to sharing ideas for coping.

i'm devoting an area to native plants, scarlet mallow, sunflowers,black eye susans, wild camonmile, cactus. we were in severe drought for four years, but have had more rain this summer than the entire last four years combined. native plants did well during the drought and are spectacular this year with the rain. portulaca, i like double moss rose, and dahlias seem to take the heat and dry very well. for the rest of my beds and garden, i mulch, mulch, mulch. during water restrictions, i resorted to watering the garden by bucket with the kids bath water. hard work, but i have had great harvests while others had none.

Everything I have is mulched, but I'm still having to water. Right now I'm watering my shrubs by taking an empty gallon milk jug, filling it with water, poking a small hole in the bottom and letting it leak out around the plants. Needless to say, this is a lot of work, because I have a lot of shrubs!

We had our drought for three years and have been on water
restriction for three years. Water ONLY 2 days a week.
My lake dried up. NOT NOW as it is moving towards the house
because of all the rain.

This year all we have is water, water, water. Over 50 days
in a row (give or take a couple). They say, however, that
because of drought it will take years to replenish the
water.

I have been offering this water to anyone who wants it.

I was able to do quite well with the water restrictions.

You are making me feel ashamed for feeling I have a water problem. We have had more rain than usual this year, but it is naturally and predictably dry here in July and August. I have been making a mess trying to use bath and kitchen water. I siphoned my pond on the hill until it got pretty low. I am interested in using more plants that can take drought, but I also have the problem of rot in the spring. For example, I have lost artemesia Silver Mound more than once in the wet spring weather. Lots of plants that can take drought, can't take my spring and fall.

Thanks Spike :)

Very dry here, too. I'm glad that I didn't put in a veggie garden this past spring. My water-thirsty plants...hydrangeas, balsam impatiens, cannas...are closer to the house, so I drag out the water for them. Even with heavy mulch, they still need water throughout the drought. I'm changing my garden for next year with hopes of having more drought-tolerant/native plants.

Helenh, please don't feel ashamed of wanting water. I asked
for it, too. Now I ask it to stop and it doesn't do it
when I ask.

Be careful what you wish for......you might get it.

We'll get our droughts in Houston eventually. It's been very wet the past 2 seasons. We moved here in 2000 and in that year it did not rain between sometime in April until late August or early September. I feel fortunate that we were not serious about gardening until the next year. We would have been so mentally unprepared, we might have given up gardening for good and just planted rocks and cacti.

Besides using drought-tolerant plants, two affordable ways we have been considering, for coping with the inevitable, include (1) use of graywater (from dishwashing, laundry and bathing), and (2) soil amending with materials that soak up water and hold it. We have a large roof, so we are lagging behind good sense not to have rain barrels yet.

I've never taken the trouble to measure it, but have some curiosity about how much water our air conditioning units precipitate. If it's 5 gallons per day or more, it would probably be worth our effort to capture that water too.

Other, less affordable thoughts have included radically altering the yard contours, to make for multiple catch basins and extreme raised beds. The catch basins would be lined or coated from lip to max depth in some artful and water-tight way, in hope that once they dried out, there would be some other, salvageable practical purpose and value to them - perhaps as compost-out-of-sight bins.

If I lived in a place like Nevada, catch basins would be my first priority. I would consider it my blackmail deal with Nature: my money or my life. My strategy would be to maximize capture of any rain, snow melt, even dew, whenever they become available, and to maximize efficiency of delivery to plants, while aiming for zero run-off and loss from evaporation, seepage etc.

I feel like we all have so much to learn or re-teach ourselves about taking the fullest possible advantage of fresh water when it is available, to save enough of it from the overabundant times so that we can hang tough through the dry times. Let's keep this forum going forever.

I have a rain barrel here, but it's illegal.We're not supposed to hoard water. I don't think the authorities will swoop down on me.
The next thing I'm going to do is get rid of about 80% of my lawn.

So, do you all think it's worthwhile to get rainbarrels when your average precipitation (including snow) is only about 20" a year, and has probably been below 10" the past couple years? I'm in Salt Lake City, where it's always dry (high desert) but it's been particularly bad the past couple of years, and I"ve debated whether or not it's worth the expense of getting rain barrels considering that we don't have RAIN.

It doesn't take much rain to fill a barrel. I can then use it when I'm told to not water at all--like when there was a main water line break. That day I had water for my stuff that wouldn't have made it without.

Excuse me, I am confused about plantladyCO's post. Why would rain barrels be illegal? I haven't heard anything so preposterous in a long time. Hoarding water from a rainfall? If there is a valid reason for it, would you please enlighten me? Thanks

Dakani, dont' question plantlady. The Government whether
city, state, federal is NOT very smart. Perhaps someone
of money decided that people could stop water by filling
a barrel. Whoops, that could be a law. Now let's talk
lawyers,..........no maybe not.

Thanks for the forum Spike. Hopefully, this forum will quickly become obsolete. After several years of drought, the subsoil in my yard is so dry it just soaks up the water I put on it before the roots can get to it. The only things not struggling are the seriously drought tolerant plants I have such as mirabilis multiflora and penestmons palmeri, parryi and pseudospectabilis.

Like yardkat, a rain bucket would have done me no good this year. The Mexican monsoon has been a real bust just when we needed it. I am allowed to water only on M-W-F from 6pm to 6am. The other side of the street gets the T-H-S shift and no one gets Sunday. Without a significant snowpack this winter, it will look really grim.

I am most concerned about how the large trees in my yard are coping with the drought. As the dry weather drags on and we begin to "triage" our watering, the plants that look heat stressed, and the portion of the lawn we look at the most (in back) get relatively more attention. During the last Boston area drought, the garden writer for the Globe raised my consciousness of how damaging drought can be for trees.I have begun to "sneaky water" two large oaks and two groves of hemlocks located in dry portions of lawn (set the hose to drip very slowly, lay it under the tree(s), and leave it dripping for most of a day or night, moving around the perimeter), watering hours be damned. The grass will most likely come back from dormancy when it does rain, and if it doesn't I'll make another heavily mulched "drought garden" bed. But those trees took most of my lifetime to reach their present size.

Our pond across the road isn't down to mud flats--yet--which it was during the drought several years ago.

Hi all.... I am in phoenix (acutally Sun City) Arizona and about to dry up and blow away.............donna

The reason for not permitting water storage is that in the West all water is spoken for. If I hoard 75 gallons in my barrel then someone downstream has been deprived of promised water.
I'm not saying that I agree with this, but water rights are a big issue in the West.

Thanks plantlady for the explanation. There is no way I could agree with "water rights" that deprive persons from collecting at the source, in this case, from the sky on their own (owned, rented or occupied) real estate. Talk about unintended consequences! That's all we need (I said sarcastically): disincentives against collection, and against prevention of evaporation, seepage, and run-off.

On plastic mulch:

"Plasticulture is the study of the use of plastics in agriculture. Covering mulch with wide strips of black plastic to raise soil temperature and inhibit weed growth is a widely accepted practiceÃAmericans use about 200 million pounds of plastic mulch each year. Recent studies suggest that, although black plastic mulch provides marked benefits, other colors may offer even greater yields. Professor Orzolek has shown that most plants have a particular, and sometimes peculiar, color preference: ÃTomatoes are partial to red, potatoes favor pale blue or white, and turnips donÃt think orange is too bad.Ã Internal pigments, called phytochromes, serve as chemical Ãeyes.Ã By reacting to different spectra of light, they signal the plant how best to use its resources. Some colors promote root growth, and others can increase fruit and vegetable yields by as much as 30 percent. The Center for Plasticulture is at the very forefront of colored-mulch research, but a few of the lessons theyÃve learned can even be applied to a small backyard garden. Some of the colors are still in experimental trials, but rolls of red polyethylene mulch covering, suitable for tomatoes and strawberries, are available from major garden-supply companies."

American Society for Plasticulture

Hi, I'm new. Anyone have thoughts on desalinization? Cruise boats got 'em, submarines, some Middle Eastern countries do. Someday, when USA is wall to wall people, even sooner, we're going to have some serious problems. Boy we could supply a lot of jobs out there too...

I got more involved in gardening and landscaping my 1 acre lot 3 years ago, and it's been such a struggle. Great timing.

paula - California has been discussing desalination for years.

Here is some info...

It'll all be shot down here, as soon as we get back into our traditional pattern; nor'easters up the coast, left over tropical storm remnants. As my husband commented, what will they do with them when we get lots of rain? California is in a pickle though, and they need to get past all the nimbys and legislation blah blah. Life's a "beach"

I see that many of us are in the same situation. I took one of those 3 gallon jugs with the spiggot (the disposable kind that spring water comes in) and put a hole in the top just large enough to fill it with tap water (although you could use run-off,pond water or gray water). Then I put it near my most needy shrub (in this case a Rhody I planted this spring) and pulled the spiggot to allow only a slow drip. This helps to keep the soil moist for several days and saves me from having to water it all the time.
Wish I could save the rest of my plants but like most folks find these days only the neediest get the attention.

What tomatoes I have left (due to heavy mulch) are cooking on the vine due to days of triple digit temps- less than 4" of rain here since March altho it has rained all around us. Maybe as the ol' folks used to say "Somebody ain't paying the preacher!"

Skyrocketing fuel costs combined with drought over much of the U.S., we can now watch prices of everything shoot up.
Suzi

I live in Kansas City,Missouri and we now have a water restriction on watering lawns.My lawn is turning brown and people are telling me not to worry because grass goes into a dormant stage and will turn green after a good rain..is this true.Please help
You can E amil me at wambiekins45@aol.com